Quote from: "http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1473208.htm"Dolphins sing 'Batman' theme
Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
Monday, 3 October 2005
Dolphins
Dolphins are the only mammals other than humans to recognise rhythms and reproduce them vocally (Image: iStockphoto)
Scientists have taught dolphins to combine both rhythm and vocalisations to produce music, resulting in an extremely high-pitched, short version of the Batman theme song.
The findings, outlined in two studies, are the first time that nonhuman mammals have demonstrated they can recognise rhythms and reproduce them vocally.
"Humans are sensitive to rhythms embedded in sequences of sounds, but we typically consider this skill to be part of processing for language and music, cognitive domains that we consider to be uniquely human," says Professor Heidi Harley, lead author of both studies.
"Clearly, aspects of those domains are available to other species."
The studies will be presented at the joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and NOISE-CON 2005, which runs from 17 to 21 October in Minneapolis.
Learning to sing
Harley, who is associate professor of social sciences at the New College of Florida in Sarasota, says that both studies tested dolphins at Disney's Epcot Center in Florida.
The researchers first had an adult male bottlenose dolphin position itself in front of an underwater sound projector, called a hydrophone, that produced six different 14 kiloherz, 4 second rhythms.
The dolphin was rewarded for performing a certain behaviour to each rhythm. For example, when rhythm 1 played, it waved its pectoral fin and when rhythm 2 played, it tossed a ball.
The various rhythms were played at different frequencies and tempos to ensure the dolphin was recognising rhythms instead of just frequencies or sound durations.
Another adult male was trained to produce similar rhythms using a pneumatic switch, essentially a small, air-filled ball connected to a computer that then generated sounds whenever the dolphin pressed the switch.
"The dolphin was reinforced for producing a specific rhythm to a specific object," says Harley.
"For example, when we presented him with a Batman doll, he received a fish for producing a specific rhythm, in this case, a short sound and then a long one."
"If you recall the original Batman TV series musical intro you'll probably remember the way they sang 'Bat-maaaaaaaan'," she adds.
The dolphin spontaneously vocalised to the rhythms, so the researchers started to reward the male with fish whenever it matched its 'singing' to the rhythms.
By the end of the studies, the scientists could show an object, such as the Batman doll, which represented a certain rhythm-vocalisation combo to the dolphin, and it would create the correct sounds both vocally and using the switch.
Batmaaaaaaan
Gordon Bauer, associate professor of psychology at the New College of Florida who did not work on the studies, says, "This is the first report, to my knowledge, of a nonhuman mammal's ability to discriminate rhythmic patterns."
But Bauer doubts that dolphins realise they are producing what people consider 'music'.
"I think music is a human construct," he says. "I doubt that it has pertinence to animals, although the elements of music, such as pitch, time, timbre, rhythm, etc, may be incorporated into animal communication."
Harley agrees, and hopes the everyday vocalisations of dolphins will be analysed in terms of their rhythmic content.
In the near future, she and her team are planning to test the dolphins on their ability to recognise recordings of their own rhythms by having them associate their own sound creations with identifying objects similar to the Batman doll.
Oh. My. God.
Upravo sam otkrio smisao zivota.
Videti te delfine. Posle toga, pucajte u mene.
(2s pretrazivanja Mreze daje prvo sledece:)
Dopune radi, a sa obzirom na datum i frazu "to my knowledge", koliko ja znam i misevi i slepi misevi su sisari, jel' da? Baska sto mi je malo bljak dresiranje za ocigledno neprirodnu radnju. Koliko je Disney i ko-god-vec-ima licencu Betmena platio za PR? Ili je prosto rec o pristupu nauci kod "social sciences at the New College of Florida in Sarasota" vs "Washington University
School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri"?
"Romantic rodents give secret serenades
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* 01 November 2005
Mice are rarely the source of romantic inspiration, but it now appears that male mice may serenade potential mates with melodies approaching the complexity of bird song.
Mouse songs are sung at ultrasonic frequencies, which is why no one has noticed their complexity before, nor indeed been moved to celebrate the tunes in romantic poetry.
Some bats are known to sing in courtship, and whale song is well-documented, but singing is otherwise unknown in non-human mammals. That it has turned up in one of the most well-studied of animals – the lab mouse – is all the more surprising.
Tim Holy and Zhongsheng Guo, of Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, US, recorded the vocalisations made by male mice in the presence of female pheromones. They then digitally modified them to drop the pitch by several octaves into the range of human hearing.
They found that the songs included several syllable types (collections of notes) which were arranged into phrases and motifs, fulfilling the definition of song. Noises made by insects such as crickets, and calls by frogs, are far simpler. You can listen to a male mouse producing a snatch of song, here, and a more determined croon, here. (imam na disku, zakk ako hoces da kacis, javni)
Metabolically taxing
The function of the mouse song is not yet known, but given that the males are stimulated to sing when they smell female pheromones, it seems likely that singing attracts females.
If mice are singing to serenade females, the song should contain information about their "quality" as a potential mate, say the researchers, and they found some evidence to support this. One sign that the song is a love song is that it requires substantial energy to produce.
"There are certain aspects to the song – for example, some extremely large, rapid sweeps in the pitch of the sound – that may be metabolically taxing," says Holy. "In that sense, there could be information about male quality in the song," with stronger males being able to sing better.
Singing in birds is used as a model system to investigate human speech and learning. But far more is known about mouse genetics. Holy hopes that studying the singing mouse will help uncover fundamental principles about the brain, and may eventually help understand disorders of communication, such as autism."
Journal reference: Public Library of Science Biology
(DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0030386)
kao neko ko je pobio hiljade miseva u istrazivacke svrhe i posle postao veliki zastupnik in vitro metoda, gde god da je to moguce (licemerno, ali racunam da je bolje ikad nego nikad), moram da kazem da sam potpuno ambivalentna po pitanju treniranja zivotinja zarad eksperimenata.
nije da nisam svesna da bez takvih i slicnih testova nema napretka humankinda, no to mi ne pomaze da se manje nerviram.
Mislim, ok, svako vidi u temi sta mu prilici, pa tako i ja (profesija mi takva da zivotinje ne moram ni da maltretiram, ni ubijam). Kapiram da ces u buducnosti imati malo vecih problema pri seciranju, sve osluskujuci da ce da ti zapeva "spare me, please!" pesmu. Ali uz svo duzno postovanje za intimne osecaje, pa makar to bila i ambivalencija, ja iskreno ne vidim nikakvu mogucnost ka napretku ljudske vrste u treniranju delfina da zvizducu Betmen-song, a jos i manje u buducoj nameri da "...recognise recordings of their own rhythms by having them associate their own sound creations with identifying objects similar to the Batman doll." Jesam li slepa kod ociju ili?
Quotenije da nisam svesna da bez takvih i slicnih testova nema napretka humankinda
Zavisi kojih testova, zavisi šta se podrazumeva pod napretkom i zavisi pod kojim okolnostima. Kako to obično ističu borci protiv vivisekcije, čovečija i mišija fiziologija su dosta različite a i ogroman roj eksperimenata na životinjama u kozmetičkoj i farmaceutskoj industriji se izvod bez razloga iz godine u godinu se ponavljajući jer propis zahteva da potvrdiš rezultate koje tvrdiš da imaš...
uf, a ja mislila da cu se lako izvuci...post mi je pregeneralizovan, priznajem.
kad sam pomenula eksperimente i napredak, vise sam mislila na nauku in general, a ne na treniranje delfina (koje mi uvek izazove blagu muku u stomaku).
s druge strane, ima nesto i u onome: samo pripremljen um..bla, bla..., a mozemo do sutra da pricamo o uzaludnosti 85% naucnih projekata na godisnjem nivou.
ono sta sam ustvari htela reci, a nisam bila precizna je sledece:
ja licno imam problem sa bilo kojom vrstom eksperimentisanja na zivotinjama (negde mislim da nemamo pravo na tako nesto, a opet, s druge strane, vidim i svrhu eksperimentisanja), a posebno sa onim koji imaju odgovarajucu in vitro alternativu: kozmeticka testiranja na zecevima ce biti potpuno ukinuta u evropi pocevsi od 2009. godine (holandija je to uradila jos odavno), testiranja odredjenih vakcina i lekova mogu takodje da se rade in vitro, ali se to u velikom broju zemalja ne radi i potrebno je to adekvatno regulisati. no, sve to ide jako sporo jer je u igri veliki biznis.
da ne sirim temu previse: bice da je resenje da menjam profesiju.
:)
Zapravo rekla si mnogo toga što sam ja hteo da kažem, ali nisam imao snage ili razuma. Kudos.
Quote from: "lilit_depp"... samo pripremljen um..bla, bla..., a mozemo do sutra da pricamo o uzaludnosti 85% naucnih projekata na godisnjem nivou.
Part one ne kapiram bas najbolje, a part two - mozemo i do prekosutra, ali ima li svrhe? Mislim u kafani smo, after all.
Ja reagujem uvek na neke fraze za koje znam sta, hm, najverovatnije znace. Ne nuzno i ne obavezno, srecom ima nas raznih. Ali koje sve cesce cujem/citam. "To my knowledge" se onda cita kao:
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Autori istrazivanja ocigledno ne zive u nekoj zabiti bez struje i vode i bez pristupa Mrezi. Obaska sto bi bilo zabavno, da nije bas smorno, sto se i previse cesto desava da istrazivaci soc-psi nauka bez blama "ulaze u atar" prirodnih nauka, a ni najmanjeg znanja o rezultatima i/ili metodama ovih potonjih nemaju. A izgleda da se nesto ni trude da saznaju.
pripremljen um je izraz koji govori da moras imati bar elementarno znanje da bi uspeo da prepoznas otkrice i vezano je (ako i to nije urbana legenda) za Sir Alexandera Flemminga (u doba kad jos nije bio Sir :wink:).
elem, legenda kaze da je Flemming baveci se svojim naucnim radom, zaboravio na neko jelo koje je trebao da pojede, pa su se tu razmnozile nekakve gljivice, i tako svi mi dodjosmo do penicilina.
da sam npr. ja, nepripremljenog uma, videla ubudjano jelo, sigurno ne bih otkrila nista jer bih ga istog momenta zafrljacila u djubre. srecom, on je ziveo malo pre mene :).
sto se tice fraza i fraza to ti je nazalost normalan nacin funkcionisanja veceg dela ljudi iz danasnje nauke.
drugi proncip je: - gurni svoje smece zemljama koje jos uvek nemaju zakonsku regulativu glede npr. testiranja antibiotika.
glumila ja "V" (for Vendetta) u Briselu u EU Parlamentu (accidentally) pre 2 godine kad se raspravljalo o 2 stvari:
1. upotrebi zivotinja u basic nauci,
2. upotrebi zivotinja za rutinske stvari (vakcine, kozmetika, lekovi).
svi su se negde slozili da je upotreba zivotinja za basic science neizbezna, a da se ono sto je zabranjeno u EU sigurno moze odraditi u zemljama koje nisu EU (i tako se neki balkanski timovi nadjose na jako znacajnim naucnim radovima).
jos jedan veliki problem u srbiji (a verujem da nije mnogo razlicito u svim ex-yu zemljama) je da ne postoji sustinski i pravi eticki komitet koji bi procenjivao da li neko istrazivanje ima ili nema smisla. bitna stvari je i da jedan mis (cist soj) kosta 20 dinara (bar je kostao pre godinu dana), a isti takav u holandiji kosta 50 evra, pa ti vidi racunicu.
slazem se ja s tobom potpuno, samo sto je sve to, nazalost, cista utopija (kad treba da se primeni na stvarni zivot/nauku).
ja sam negde na pola odustala od borbe :(
ps.
svrha i kafana uvek idu zajedno.
xcheers