Gallery: Dawn Chorus, Primeval Forest and Jaguars at Night: Listen to Nature's Orchestra
01introducing-the-biophony
Most people see nature. Bernie Krause hears it. For three decades, he's collected the sounds of the natural world, from Amazon jungles to Antarctic glaciers and even ant colonies. For Krause, the sounds are more than ambience: They're a sonic manifestation of ecologies, at once beautiful and information-dense. "If we lived in a culture that was more sonically oriented, rather than visually oriented, what kinds of things would we experience?" Krause wonders. [](http://www.amazon.com/Great-Animal-Orchestra-Finding-Origins/dp/0316086878)In his newly published *[The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places](http://www.amazon.com/Great-Animal-Orchestra-Finding-Origins/dp/0316086878)*, Krause answers that question. He describes and plays highlights from three decades of work, and calls for a deeper appreciation of soundscapes that he considers central to humanity's evolution. "Natural soundscapes are one of the most fertile unexplored sources of information we have. They contain secrets of our origins, our past, our cultural present," he writes in *Orchestra*. On the following pages, Krause talks with Wired and shares some of his favorite recordings. Headphones are highly recommended. ### Introducing the Biophony In the early 1980s, Krause -- who in previous decades had [moved from popular to avant-garde music](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Krause), and then to nature recording -- was sent by the California Academy of Sciences to Kenya, where he would make recordings for an upcoming exhibit. Krause had long thought that nature's sounds were not cacophonous, but possessed an almost orchestral level of organization. New technological tools gave substance to his intuitions. "I was doing a lot of audio forensics at the time. I had new software to generate spectrograms -- graphic illustrations of sounds, their time and frequency -- and I found exactly what I heard: this bandwidth discrimination between all the types of creatures. Insects found their niches, birds found theirs, mammals found theirs. Each had their own place," Krause recalled. He coined the term "biophony," or the sonic patterns of life, to describe this phenomenon. "Natural voices are the sounds of whole ecosystems," he writes in *The Great Animal Orchestra*. In this nighttime recording from the Central African Republic, forest elephants gather at a bai -- a pondside clearing made by elephants where upwelling groundwater leaves deposits of salt-rich mud. Their voices and grunts intermingle with the synchronized sounds of insects and frogs. <object data="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/ElephantsBai_Eco.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF" height="20" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="200"><param name="bgcolor" value="FFFFFF"></param><param name="movie" value="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/ElephantsBai_Eco.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF"></param></object> *Image: [Noel Feans](https://secure.flickr.com/photos/endogamia/3958508854/)/Flickr* *Audio: [Pijanowski et al./Bioscience](http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/bio.2011.61.3.6)*
02primeval-voices
### Primeval Voices When scientists [speculate on the evolution of human vocalization, communication and especially music](http://www.economist.com/node/12795510), two habits abound. They tend to emphasize utility -- mate preference, social reinforcement, cognitive development -- and conceive of humans and other hominids in isolation from other animals and natural environments. To Krause, humanity's evolutionary environments and musical development are intertwined, with local biophonies likely shaping the sounds of different groups. "It would depend on where we lived, how far language had evolved, and how far music had evolved. When we emerged onto the plains, we probably had no formal language, but were imitating -- because we're great imitators -- the sounds we heard," Krause said. "That was who we had to communicate with. We had to reconcile the state of our lives in that particular environment." In this dawn chorus recording from an old-growth dry forest in Zimbabwe, a fantastic complexity of sounds can be heard: 30 different bird species in the first minute, and at 1:15 the booming echoes of baboons. <object data="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/ZimDryForest_GAO.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF" height="20" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="200"><param name="bgcolor" value="FFFFFF"></param><param name="movie" value="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/ZimDryForest_GAO.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF"></param></object> *Image: Baboons in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe. ([Laura](https://secure.flickr.com/photos/twonickels/90916271/)/Flickr)* *Audio: Bernie Krause/[The Great Animal Orchestra](http://www.amazon.com/Great-Animal-Orchestra-Finding-Origins/dp/0316086878)*
03the-natural-orchestra-2
### The Natural Orchestra <object data="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/WomenGatheringPayu_GAO.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF" height="20" type="appli cation/x-shockwave-flash" width="200"><param name="bgcolor" value="FFFFFF"></param><param name="movie" value="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/WomenGatheringPayu_GAO.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF"></param></object> In *The Great Animal Orchestra*, Krause asserts that the pentatonic scale played by the [first known musical instruments](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090624-bone-flute-oldest-instrument.html) and ubiquitous in global musical traditions was inspired by nature, where it's sung by birds like the [musician wren](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6ITnjSws5I) and common potoo. That the pentatonic scale is so common, however, obscures the richness of other possible musical forms. "It fits with the musical paradigm we're familiar with. If you listen to the sounds of a particular biophony from a tropical forest, the rhythmic structure and tonal structure of soloists is much more complex than the designations we've given to music," Krause said. In the music of indigenous people, Krause hears reflections of the sonic environments that shaped their everyday lives. "Watching them, seeing how they interact with the natural world, it becomes clear that they're taking a lot of their cues from these biophonies," he said. "They use the sounds of the natural world as a karaoke orchestra with which they perform. It connects them to the natural world." The BaBenzele, heard in this recording, live in the Dzanga-Tsonga rain forests of the Central African Republic. "When you look at the spectrograms of the music, compared to forest sounds in the background, it fits like a glove," said Krause. A recording from Dzangha-Tsonga is depicted in the spectrogram above, with time plotted on the X-axis and audio frequencies on the Y-axis. Where there is white space is where BaBenzele music fits. *Image: Bernie Krause* *Audio: Bernie Krause/[The Great Animal Orchestra](http://www.amazon.com/Great-Animal-Orchestra-Finding-Origins/dp/0316086878)*
04orchestral-peaks
### Orchestral Peaks Dawn is the sonically richest time of day, the peak of any biophonic orchestra, and to Krause's ears it's the denouement of an evolutionary narrative's daily retelling. "The species enter the performance in order of evolution," he said. "The insects begin at two in the morning. The reptiles and amphibians then enter. Birds come in at dawn, and mammals after that. It follows evolutionary patterns in a way that's astonishing." This dawn chorus was recorded in a tropical forest in Madagascar, an island that separated from Africa 150 million years ago and is celebrated for the extraordinary diversity of plants and animals that evolved there and nowhere else. In a 2011 *Bioscience* paper, Krause and co-authors say the recording "most likely represents some of the greatest acoustic niche separation in the world." <object data="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/MadagascarDawn_Eco.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF" height="20" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="200"><param name="bgcolor" value="FFFFFF"></param><param name="movie" value="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/MadagascarDawn_Eco.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF"></param></object> *Image: Madagascar pygmy kingfisher. ([Luc Legay](https://secure.flickr.com/photos/42244964@N03/4467399434/)/Flickr)* *Audio: [Pijanowski et al./Bioscience](http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/bio.2011.61.3.6)*
05scales-of-sound
### Scales of Sound Soundscapes are inevitably perceived from a human auditory perspective, but of course they exist at many scales. An elephant's soundscape may extend for miles in every direction, and a sperm whale's across entire oceans, while that of an ant colony -- recorded below -- can be crossed in a stride. <object data="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/Ants_Eco.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF" height="20" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="200"><param name="bgcolor" value="FFFFFF"></param><param name="movie" value="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/Ants_Eco.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF"></param></object> *Image: [Steve Jurvetson](https://secure.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/70704300/)/Flickr)* *Audio: [Pijanowski et al./Bioscience](http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/bio.2011.61.3.6)*
06thunderous-voices
### Thunderous Voices Just as animal voices evolved in concert with a symphony of other biological sounds, they also evolved in relation to the sounds of wind and water, or what Krause calls the geophony. "They had to find their niche within the geophonic bandwidth," he said. "It was the first sound. There are still animals today that learned their voices from the geophony." Such a claim is necessarily speculative, and may seem unjustifiably subjective, but for skeptical ears Krause plays the calls of Weddell seals from Antarctica and bearded seals from the Arctic. "Thunderstorms at the equator put out electric energy that's carried through Earth's magnetic field to the poles. It's the electric energy from those storms that, somehow, the seals pick up and translate into a vocalization that's extremely similar," he said. "How do they do that? These are migratory mammals with a lot of magnetite in their heads. So there's a way of receiving a signal. Whether or not it actually happens, we don't know. But the sounds are so similar, I have a hard time not accepting it." Equatorial thunderstorm: <object data="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/WhistlerThunderstorms.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF" height="20" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="200"><param name="bgcolor" value="FFFFFF"></param><param name="movie" value="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/WhistlerThunderstorms.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF"></param></object> Bearded seal: <object data="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/BeardedSeal.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF" height="20" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="200"><param name="bgcolor" value="FFFFFF"></param><param name="movie" value="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/BeardedSeal.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF"></param></object> Weddel's seal: <object data="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/WeddellsSeal.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF" height="20" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="200"><param name="bgcolor" value="FFFFFF"></param><param name="movie" value="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/WeddellsSeal.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF"></param></object> *Image: Bearded seal. ([Kerry Ritz](https://secure.flickr.com/photos/kerrylondon/6158216239/)/Flickr)* *Audio: Bernie Krause*
07meeting-a-jaguar
### Meeting a Jaguar While Krause focuses on the collective sounds of entire habitats rather than individual animals, it's impossible not to be captivated by some. One such sound is the rumble of a jaguar heard but not seen during a nighttime recording session in the Amazon jungle. "The incident lasted no more than a minute, but it seemed like a couple of hours as I sat mesmerized by the power of the animal's voice, its breathing, and the sounds of rumbles in its stomach," Krause writes in *The Great Animal Orchestra*. "Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the jaguar moved silently off into the forest, leaving behind rhythmic waves of frog and whirring insect choruses, and what remained of my pounding heart." <object data="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/JaguarGAO.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF" height="20" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="200"><param name="bgcolor" value="FFFFFF"></param><param name="movie" value="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/JaguarGAO.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF"></param></object> *Image: Jaguar in Central Suriname Nature Reserve, Suriname. ([Conservation International/Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring Network/Conservation International Suriname](http://www.conservation.org/Pages/default.aspx))* *Audio: Bernie Krause/[The Great Animal Orchestra](http://www.amazon.com/Great-Animal-Orchestra-Finding-Origins/dp/0316086878)*
08soundscape-science
### Soundscape Science In the early 1980s, when Krause first suggested to the California Academy of Sciences that an ecosystem's sounds could be analyzed as rigorously as species distributions and nutrient gradients, he was politely ignored. "The way we've listened to the natural world, and seen the natural world, is by taking things out of context. We name it, label it, put it in a drawer. People had gone out and recorded with parabolic dishes these individual animals," Krause said. "It's much less easy to quantify holistic patterns and structures and biophonies." A few scientists, however, heard the potential in Krause's suggestion. Others came to the idea on their own. In recent years, soundscape ecology has [become a full-fledged field of study](http://www.springerlink.com/content/0921-2973/26/9/ ), with researchers using sound to investigate and understand natural systems. The [Purdue Soundscape Ecology Project](http://1159sequoia05.fnr.purdue.edu/) is a leader in this research. In the image above, unexpected spatial variations in the day-to-day soundscape of a Tuscan beech forest plot can be seen. The sonic richness of a Tuscan forest's dawn chorus can be heard in the clip below. <object data="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/Tuscany_Eco.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF" height="20" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="200"><param name="bgcolor" value="FFFFFF"></param><param name="movie" value="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/Tuscany_Eco.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF"></param></object> *Image: [Pijanowski et al./Bioscience](http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/bio.2011.61.3.6)* *Audio: [Pijanowski et al./Bioscience](http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/bio.2011.61.3.6)*
09unnatural-noise
### Unnatural Noise The impact of human noise on animal behaviors and communities is [a fast-growing area of research](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=anthropogenic+noise+impacts+animals&btnG=Search&as_sdt=0%2C20&as_ylo=&as_vis=0). Few parts of the industrialized world are free of human noise, which often crowds sonic niches occupied by other animals. The [Purdue Soundscape Ecology Project](http://1159sequoia05.fnr.purdue.edu/) collected the recording below at 10 p.m beside a busy intersection near Purdue University. Nighthawks can be heard calling in the gaps between passing cars and a computerized campus bell. <object data="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/PurdueNight_Eco.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF" height="20" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="200"><param name="bgcolor" value="FFFFFF"></param><param name="movie" value="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/PurdueNight_Eco.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF"></param></object> *Image: At left, measurements of noise along the Going to the Sun road in Glacier National Park. At right, a map of road cover in the United States. An estimated 83 percent of U.S. land area is within a half-mile of a road. ([Barber et al.](http://www.springerlink.com/content/h7278j6573434837/)/Landscape Ecology)* *Audio: [Pijanowski et al./Bioscience](http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/bio.2011.61.3.6)*
10sound-diagnosis
### Sound Diagnosis Soundscape ecology can be used as a tool for habitat analysis and resource management. "When a habitat is viable, the patterns in that structure will be very clear," said Krause. "When a habitat is stressed or badly compromised, either there will be no sound, or the structure will be non-existent. It will be fragmented, fractured, splintered, completely deconstructed." The difference is starkly evident in these recordings of healthy and dying coral reefs in Fiji. <object data="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/ReefAliveDead_GAO.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF" height="20" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="200"><param name="bgcolor" value="FFFFFF"></param><param name="movie" value="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/ReefAliveDead_GAO.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF"></param></object> *Image: Coral reef ecosystem at Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. (Jim Maragos/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)* *Audio: Bernie Krause/[The Great Animal Orchestra](http://www.amazon.com/Great-Animal-Orchestra-Finding-Origins/dp/0316086878)*
11political-noise
### Political Sounds Studying nature's sounds would seem a non-partisan pastime, but the microphones of Krause and colleagues have at times been controversial. In the late 1990s, the National Parks Service started the Natural Soundscape Program with the hope of teaching park visitors to appreciate unique soundscapes as they would a photogenic vista or scenic landmark. To congressmen Don Young of Alaska and Richard Pombo of California, however, this represented an environmentalist threat to noisemaking in national parks. Young, who [in a radio interview said](http://www.akwildlife.org/content/view/112/68/) that environmentalists "are not Americans, never have been Americans, never will be Americans," and Pombo [pressured the Department of the Interior](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/Don-Young-Letter.pdf) to cease the Natural Soundscape Program. It was renamed the Natural Sounds Program, a denatured term denoting a new focus on individual animal sounds, and reduced in scale and funding. Krause said the program has recovered in recent years, with its 2011 publication of *[The Power of Sound](http://www.akwildlife.org/content/view/112/68/)* marking a resurgence in treating wild soundscapes -- like this recording of a Yellowstone field in autumn -- as treasures. <object data="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/YellowstoneFallGAO.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF" height="20" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="200"><param name="bgcolor" value="FFFFFF"></param><param name="movie" value="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/YellowstoneFallGAO.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF"></param></object> *Image: Bison grazing beside Yellowstone Lake. ([Richie Diesterheft](https://secure.flickr.com/photos/puroticorico/3633663195/)/Flickr)* *Audio: Bernie Krause/[The Great Animal Orchestra](http://www.amazon.com/Great-Animal-Orchestra-Finding-Origins/dp/0316086878)*
12sonic-celebration
### Sonic Celebration Krause describes his appreciation of soundscapes as a "celebration of life as expressed through the vocal biota of the world." In this recording, ambient night sounds are a backdrop to gray wolves howling in Canada's Algonquin National Park. <object data="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/Wolves_Eco.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF" height="20" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="200"><param name="bgcolor" value="FFFFFF"></param><param name="movie" value="http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/Wolves_Eco.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF"></param></object> *Image: [Tambako the Jaguar](https://secure.flickr.com/photos/tambako/3273239254/)/Flickr* *Audio: [Pijanowski et al./Bioscience](http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/bio.2011.61.3.6)*
