Peter Warshall's "Animal Sounds" Lecture

Hey APES!

With the title alone, I wasn't sure that I could elaborate on this lecture as much as I would like to--required to actually. But, I'll certainly try.

I found this lecture to be a little more engaging and relative than "Where's Hell". He kept my attention going with the use of his sound recordings. The first thing that came into my mind was where did he get all of these sounds? But no matter.

I was actually able to agree with Warshall when he mentioned how the study of music is important to poets. This was my first bullet note. I'm pretty sure that almost all of poetry have some type of rhythm. Without rhythm, a poem just sounds boring and readers would just be reading it straight--not sure if I'm making sense...it's a bit hard to explain. For example, a poem can have an AA BB CC pattern--this pattern in itself is a type of rhythm--and this rhythm moves like a beat--and music has a beat! Hope I made it a little more clear? Basically, in order for GOOD poetry to be written, it needs "music".

Another point I would like to address is how he describe white noise--fearsome, awesome, and divine. This was an enormous exaggeration to me because usually, these type of words describe some type of higher power, godly even. But, I changed my mind, especially when he says how people thought that the white noise were from the gods. I compared this higher power to the evolution of sound. His whole lecture is based on how sound has changed and affected the planet. Sound has such a dominating role that it should be described as fearsome, awesome, and divine. Until this lecture, I never realized how sound had such an impact on Earth. From the beginning of time to the present.

I also wondered how sounds become a type of seduction and are intimate. But, it slowly became self-explanatory when he reached the subject of male and female--the time of mating. I found it interesting how much sound is put into this type of relation within the animal and human species. This might sound a bit clique, but the way an animal, like the frog example in Warshall's lecture, and a human try to attract a mate are similar. As society puts it, the man who has "more game" into courting a woman usually gets the her. The same way goes for the frog. The lowest and loudest grunt attracts the female frog's attention and he gets her. This is evidence enough to prove that sound alone has an effect on how we all (humans and animals) communicate with one another. One problem I experienced in this lecture was how at the end he states two poetic goals: 1) to take evolutionary history of assertive low pitches and to reverse the sound 2.) to stress high pitches and to turn that into beautiful sounds. What did he mean by this?