Bioacoustics

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Bioacoustics is a cross-disciplinary science, which investigates sound production and reception in animals, including humans, the biological acoustically-borne information transfer and its propagation in elastic media. Bioacoustics also refers to the organs of hearing and to the sound production apparatus, as well as to the physiological and neurophysiological processes by which sounds are produced, received and processed. Furthermore, bioacoustics attempts to understand the relationships between the features of the sounds an animal produces and the nature of the environment in which they are used, as well as the functions they are designed to serve. Finally, it includes the techniques associated with instrumental and biological sonar for its use in population monitoring, identification and communication encoding mechanisms and allows the assessment and control of the effects of human-made noise on animals. Source: Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics

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Some animals use sound ranging from infrasounds to ultrasounds to send messages to conspecifics. Basic messages are for calling mates (sexual calls), warning about a danger (alarm calls) or to intimidate a competitor (aggressive calls). In birds and mammals more complex messages can be broadcast. Some animals can also investigate the surrounding environment by emitting sounds and listening for returning echoes. Bats and dolphins have developed the most advanced echolocation capabilities to avoid obstacles and to find prey. They use short ultrasonic signals, not audible for the human ear, to reveal small objects (shorter the wavelength, smaller the objects that can be detected). This ability is also called "bio-sonar" or biological sonar. A special branch of bioacoustics concerns the underwater world and marine mammals in particular.

Bioacoustics was established by the Slovenian biologist Ivan Regen.[1] On 31 August 1925 he used a special stridulatory device to play in a duet with an insect. Later he put a male cricket behind microphone and cricket females in front of a loudspeaker. The females were not moving towards the male but towards the loudspeaker.[2]

The most recent advances in bioacoustics concern the relationships among the animals and their environment and the impact of anthropogenic noise.