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Computers Seek The Call Of An Extinct Bird
Buran writes: "As a self-proclaimed geek and a relative (and fascinated!) newcomer to the world of birding, I found this article in the New York Times Science Tuesday about the search for the ivory-billed woodpecker to be rather interesting. The bird, which was listed as extinct in 1997, has not been definitively sighted since the 1950s, but a recent reported sighting (in 1999) has led to a redoubled effort to find it. The geek side is this: Since it would be impractical for a human to sift through 5,000 hours of recorded sound (two and a half years, they estmate) to listen for the bird's distinctive call, the Cornell researchers are working on algorithms that can pick out interesting sections of digitally recorded sound, taken from microphones placed throughout the study area, for a human (who can outdo a computer any day at making the final determination) to review. I am hopeful that the search will return a positive result."
You would have to assume that all ivory billed woodpeckers sounded exactly alike, which they don't. The human brain is way better at fuzzy stuff than a box is. I once saw a program on TV about this in regards to facial recognition. The computer was great at it, as long as it was easy to get the primary facial measurements. Throw in some distortion and the computer got lost on a sample that the human eye could easily identify
If it ain't a Model M, it's a piece of crap.
And once the bird has been located, we cover the area with poison, to get the bird collected, just to prove, that it's not extinct.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
NPR has done two stories on this in the last couple the months. The first was a piece specifically about the 1935 audio recording. And the second talks about this latest attempt to locate any surviving members of the species.
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