The murmurs, whispers, shrieks and growls of 9,000 species are now digitized in a huge library of animal sounds, including some songs that will never be sung again.
Housed at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Macaulay Library’s audio archive contains roughly 150,000 high-resolution recordings, all available online. It’s the largest collection of wildlife sounds in the world, and routinely called upon by students, scholars, scientists, and filmmakers.
“Sound has a remarkable ability to transport someone,” said audio curator Greg Budney. “You play a sound, and it’s as though the person or the animal is alive, right there in the room with you.”
Digitizing the collection took 12 years. Now, the 10 terabytes of tracks have a total playback time of more than 7,500 hours. Supplementing that auditory cacophony are thousands of video clips, and a photo archive is on the way.
The collection’s inaugural recordings date back to 1929, when a song sparrow, rose-breasted grosbeak, and house wren were recorded singing near the shores of Cayuga Lake. The youngest bird in the collection is an ostrich – recorded while still in its egg.
Who makes this sound?
(answer below)Whales, cicadas, hippos, and even the environmental soundscape of an Indian temple await listeners.
Also tucked into the collection are recordings of the now-extinct Kauai Oo and the (most-likely) extinct ivory-billed woodpecker. Preserving these natural sounds for future generations is certainly one of the collection’s functions, but Budney points to others.
“If you want people to have an appreciation for places they might never go, or animals they’ve never seen, sound really makes it alive for them,” he said. “But then, also in the collection, are fantastic discoveries waiting to be made.”
Already, the collection has revealed geographic differences in the tunes some birds sing, and helped scientists identify new bird species; biologists are using the recordings to better understand animal behavior; and the decades of data can tell scientists how vocalizations have changed over the years.
But it’s not just for experts: Anyone can contribute to the collection, and anyone can listen to it.
Two of Budney’s favorite sounds include the substrate-based vibrations of treehoppers – tiny, crazy-looking insects that send signals zinging through the stems and branches on which they perch – and the wing-beats of the ruffed grouse, which can be heard up to a quarter-mile away. “It sounds like someone starting up an old VW bus,” he said.
A bell-like walrus, otherworldly bird song, the hidden realm of insects, “There are sounds like this going on all around the world,” Budney said. “And we’re just beginning to learn about them, just beginning to tap into them.”
Now, archivists are working on adding more than 50,000 raw recordings to the already-expansive repository, a favored resource of filmmakers. Ken Burns consulted the Macaulay Library holdings while creating his National Parks series. Harry Potter’s audio team needed help finding something that sounded like a hippogriff. And Skywalker Sound sought some audio help while working on The Incredibles.
Hidden in the collection are all kinds of gems. Here, we’ve compiled a few of our favorites in audio quiz format -- all are in the grid above. Have a listen, then scroll down in each slide to reveal which animal made which sound (the "view all" option is not recommended for this gallery).
Is that an interstellar spaceship? Are those haunting howls coming from a mammal? A bird? What on Earth sounds like…that?
For those wading into the archive on their own, Budney has a few tips: Search by animal, or by geographic area. The first search results returned for a species are the best recordings. Learn songs or sounds a few at a time. And enjoy!
“One of the potent aspects of this archive that moves it out of the realm of just being a menagerie of wildlife sounds and into a real conservation and research resource is that technology is advancing our understanding of how animals use sounds,” Budney said.
(Answer: Chimpanzee)
Photo: Thomas Lersch/Wikimedia
All audio courtesy of Macaulay Library.
You'll Never Guess Who: Strange Recordings From the Library of Animal Sounds
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You'll Never Guess Who: Strange Recordings From the Library of Animal Sounds
