Humans are rather poor listeners, compared with our fellow Earth-dwellers. The world is alive with sound that we cannot hear, from the ultrasonic echolocation of bats to the infrasonic ‘drumming heartbeat’ of the Earth’s crust beneath the crashing of ocean waves.
In ‘The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is Bringing us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants’ (Princeton University Press, £25, ISBN 9780691206288), environmental researcher Professor Karen Bakker explains how the fields of bioacoustics and ecoacoustics – armed with relatively accessible digital technologies – are helping us comprehend and conserve this world we cannot hear.
‘The Sounds of Life’ is filled with stories about the discovery of non-human sounds and their meanings, reaching far beyond the usual suspects: whales and elephants. There are plenty of romantic allusions to music and poetry – “If humpbacks and bowheads recite sonnets, blue and fin whales are the marine masters...