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Scientists Study The Scream Of The Squirrel
SimianOverlord writes "The BBC details a recent breakthrough in Squirrel to Man understanding. Scientist James Hare, in his study of the North American Ground Squirrel, noted peculiar behaviour; they appeared to 'lose their voice' while communicating, producing only a 'breathy whisper' in sound ranges audible to the human ear. On a hunch, the intrepid boffin borrowed a 'bat detector', which translates inaudible ultrasound into the human hearing range, and discovered the Squirrels were using a whole range of distinct ultrasound messages which can give gradated threat warnings or be targetted to family members, all without any predators detecting the message, or easily pinpointing the location of the caller. Though it has been known for some time rodents use ultrasound, this is believed to be the first time that it has a proven purpose, and the content of the messages have been deciphered."
If they need to capture specimens to test, there's always this method.
Crazy Brits - apparently the call gophers 'ground squirrels'. Squirrels, as we all well know, communicate by singing in poorly made flash movies.
It's been shown that not only do squirrels communicate with each other for practical purposes, but they also have a fairly sophisticated system of music. Quoth the small woodland bard:
When you're a kid and you wanna go "wheeeee," but you ain't got drugs yet
You hold out for your life
Hold on to your little gonads...and strife.
We could learn a lot from the little guys, no?
That's pretty nutty stuff.
Unbeknownst to those scientists, the Leaf Guard gutter people have been using the ultrasound detectors for some time. If you've heard the radio commercials (or seen the commercials on cable), you'll note that the squirrels are speaking in full, English sentences.
That might seem extraordinary, but consider that the squirrels in question live in North America, it's pretty obvious that they'd start picking up our language. However, there are small enclaves of squirrels who speak Spanish and other languages. Just goes to show what a blended society the squirrels have.
Seriously though, I'm surprised this discovery hadn't aleady happened. Heck, if I had a ultrasonic-to-sonic thing-a-ma-jig like that, I'd have pointed it at all sorts of things by now--people, birds (who says what we hear is all they squawk), squirrels, cars, etc.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Why do you think that doing research in one area detracts from research in another?
Using your logic, we should be mad at you for spending time on Slashdot instead of using that time researching "molecular manufacturing, or stem cells, or space flight".
Get on it, you lazy bum!
I am researching molecular manufacturing. I'm just waiting for the damn compiler to finish.
... at 31,357 Hz, it clearly means "That big thing with the bat-detector is starting to freak me out. Lets bite his nuts."
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
pesky moose and squirrel can no longer evade me!
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
You realize that if this post was about research into asteroid mining, your alter ego would be saying "Why are we spending money on something so pointless when we could be trying to better understand the ecosystem where we live right now?"
It all depends on whose ox is gored.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Squirrel 1: Sir, we are under attack.
Squirrel 2: Raise shields.
Squirrel 1: [Holds up large leaf with hole in it] Our shields are no match for their weapon systems, sir. But I believe that if we remodulate our communication frequencies, we will be undetectable to the enemy.
Squirrel 2: Make it so.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
Anyone remember the Little Fuzzy books by H. Beam Piper? The humans colonizing the planet Zarathustra think the little native bipeds can't pass the "talk and build a fire" test for intelligence until they start to listen in the ultrasonic range. . .