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Researchers Test Whether Sharks Enjoy Christmas Songs
Scientists plan to test whether sharks enjoy listening to Christmas pop songs, after US research showed fish could recognize melody. Chris Brown, senior marine biologist at the Loch Lomond aquarium, said seasonal music would be played through walkthrough underwater tunnels where they can be heard by dozens of nurse sharks, black-tip reef sharks, and ray species. Experts will then monitor the sharks' reactions to different songs. We'll play everything from Kim Wilde and Mel Smith's Rocking Around the Christmas Tree and Merry Christmas Everybody by Slade to Wham's Last Christmas. We may find they prefer something softer like White Christmas by Bing Crosby," Brown said. Thank you for answering this question science.
A "Great" White Christmas.
Don't let them get a hold of any lasers, that could be a bad combination.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
as the sharks bludgeon themselves on the sides of the tunnel, being unable to plug their ears as scientists incessently torture them with 90s remakes that completely lack christmas spirit.
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
re: "Mod me up because I have a vagina and I advertise it through my username!"
Hmmm... "Anonymous Coward". Yes, kind of an obscure reference but, indeed, you are correct there. :^p
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
But these great whites are so damn frightful.
Indeed, for those of us who suffered through the fads of the 1970's, there is a horrid piece of kitsch called "Santa Jaws", a parody of A Visit From Saint Nicholas, brought to you by the same source as the slightly more famous Mr. Jaws.
"Santa Jaws" is so (deservedly) obscure that it doesn't appear on YouTube nor are its lyrics available anywhere except here and only from memory, and only due to being unavailable anywhere else.
Yet, it appears to have finally had a purpose after all. :^p
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
The best guess I have is that they probably won't care about it at best, or they will just be somewhat annoyed by the noise.
Now, if it were something like Two-Fin Shakur or even Mariah Carp we might get a scientifically valid result.
to test if ants can be trained to sort tiny screws in space.
Who the hell is funding this?
who says our tax dollars aren't being put to good use?
More interesting question would be the effect of Christmas songs on humans. More specifically, whether the endless playing of them in every store starting from at least a month before Christmas causes people to buy more crap. You'd think it would cause the stores must have researched that kind of stuff, but then every person I know regards them as an annoyance. Personally, I would go out of my way to shop at a store that doesn't play them if I could only find one.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Stop wasting our money, seriously.
This has little to do with science.
Your post about Christmas songs reminded me of this Slashdot thread from more than 4 years ago. It still cracks me up.
...what happens if they pipe the 'Jaws' movie theme music - see if they all shit themselves and get out of the water real fast.
I think we're gonna need a bigger grant...
Sharks with frickin' christmas tunes stuck in their heads...?
Great strides in the field of mad science, I suppose.
Half year or so the new idle was introduced - fine with me. Some stupid stories to waste time, nicely grouped together.
Then a few months ago now and then idle stories started making the front page. Acceptable, easy to filter using preferences.
But nowadays I see two, three of these idle type stories hit the front page every day! Now this stupid shark thing, masking as a science story. Appropriately tagged 'idle' already.
Please editors: keep idle type stories in the idle section, not in other sections, so we can filter them out if we like. And only real science stories in the science section. It's what those sections are made for, right?
I hate Christmas songs because I am a mammal. The fish might like it, but they also like fish food. I bet you no mammal will like Christmas songs. If you do, you are a fish.
Winkey shortcut mapping for 64bit windows. WinKeyPlus
test whether sharks enjoy listening to Christmas pop songs
No. They don't.
They enjoy lasers as christmas presents though...
I reckon that they're trying for an Ig Nobel prize
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize
If this isn't cruel animal testing I don't know what is.
Surely sharks will like "Santa Jaws". (mp3 here).
IDLE.
do sharks enjoy researchers?
The evil in the USA knows no bounds.
There is no reason that wifi over power lines should be federally banned as there is no proof that air guide signals impede the phase of electrical power signals, even 4 phase lines. It is known that wifi works on a QAM-8 orthaginal spacing while 4 phase always exhibits a rhomboid sine distribution. The twisted pair cross-current vs. serial overload buffer magnetisism is most overcome by employing a larger multi-linear, nor capacitance resistor in parallel with a Ombudsman-type ohm logger. It is true the fidelity of the upper octaves of any oboe solo is overcome by refractive copper tunings in the brass section, but this can be damped by wet rag dolls and the use of Criso oil as the valve lubricant. Further, songs in the key of G fail to pass the "spectrum de art" test since they are not composed in blue or aqua crayon. At the rate these researchers are going, dolphins will become the pray of off-tune, but well-meaning, carolers who believe in a "flat earth" with no harmonic resonances in the upper foundations of granite sub-articulates.
Everyone understand, now?
Nope, me neither.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
If you had one, maybe you wouldn't feel the need to be an asshole to a woman on an internet forum for no reason.
You must be new here.
... welcome our new carol-loving, aquatic predatorial overlords.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I can safely say I hate Christmas music.
they enjoy Christmas tunas
I'm almost sure the scientists work in Britain. :P Such "science" comes from there mostly :)
Is this funded by tax payer money? due to separation of church and state, your favoritism towards Christianity in your study is illegal.
No TRUE slashdot member would want to miss out on the opportunity to make shark/frikin laser beam jokes
I didn't RTFA, but can you really measure enjoyment? I highly doubt they enjoy much but tearing into flesh and the smell of blood.
Question: Who the hell funds these projects? And why?
Anyone know how I can get a job like that? I would love to come up with the most contrived non-sense & get paid for doing it. I've got one right now.
Some people have way to much time on their hands!
They have nothing better to test? What a waste.
What they are going to do to these poor sharks is torture, like what they do in Guantanamo Bay! Don't be surprised if the sharks fight back and the next story will be about some eaten scientists. Pray that sharks don't decide to take it out on all the humans and start inventing lasers!
You can't handle the truth.
Been there, done that
"Coming up next, can bees think? A new study confirms: No, they cannot." http://www.fact-archive.com/quotes/Family_Guy
It's crap like this that made me fall in love with ./
Seriously, I never thought it possible, but the universe has bent in such a way that the extreme insipid evil that are xmax carols inflicted on poor helpless sharks is funny. Really funny. Sad... but really funny!
Maybe we could find the actual sharks who have attacked humans and force them to listen to xmax music, ala "Clockwork Orange" to teach them a lesson. Let them free so that they will tell other sharks about the horrors.
Of course, then we will see sharks beaching themselves like dolphins just to get the stupid tunes out of their tiny little brains.
They're testing Christmas Music as effective shark repellent. What shark in his right mind would willingly stick around to listen to We Wish You A Merry Christmas.
On the other hand, they may find that Jingle Bells sounds exactly like an injured seal.
.... What happens if they get Rickrolled instead.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
I see an Ignoble Award looming.
Yeah, I don't know what I'd do without mine.
Without it, you might have to get a job or something.
Obligatory XKCD: http://www.xkcd.com/322/
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
Let's see... a government-funded study, to determine whether a sea animal likes music created by HUMANS. Uh huh... right. You know what, screw all the bleeding-heart types. I think "boondoggle" is the word we're all searching for here.
Zooperman
Just don't give the sharks with lasers a listen to those xmass tunes, especially not frosty the cooked human tune... I'm melting... I'm melting...
Of course, when I think of important scientific research, I think of sharks and music.
BRILLIANT!
(pack of fucking idiots...wasting money for this shit)
WTF? Over?
I've kept quiet about the recent changes. I liked the AJAX a lot, and didn't really mind Idle. Not all of it is bad.
But this really pisses me off samzenpus. Keep this bullshit in idle, this isn't science, this isn't interesting or important, and this isn't slashdot.
Thank you.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Everyone knows sharks must swim or die and, when the alternative was Christmas pop songs, they've made their choice.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
including yours. Or maybe they're answering basic questions about the workings of fish which, like all basic research, may or may not pay off in the future. But you can bet that the scientists don't care any more than you do about the human significance of the tunes involved, despite the implications of your trollish post.
The other implication of posts like this is that the scientists are wasting money. Oh. I look at how, say, the DoD uses our money, and how the private sector (including, I daresay, *you*, my dear and cynical OP'er) spends it's money, and realize that money funding research would be madly wasted by the government or its citizens. So I say give it to the scientists. At least they're learning something, and sharing what they discover.
"If you're not passionate about your operating system, you're married to the wrong one."
It would be much easier to see their reaction, just see if they follow along-
Fins to the left..< splash > Check.
Fins to the right...< splash > Check.
Let me guess, certain songs will stimulate sharks. Does it mean they like the music? Or that the rhythm reminds them of the excited heartbeat of a baby seal? Maybe its the magnets in the speaker systems. Or the electricity in the wires. What about differing tastes of music between individual sharks? We don't actually assume that music preference is species wide for sharks, do we? Get ready for some serious bias in interpreting whatever results these experiments find.
Remember, Bing Crosby is for slow-aquatic-red-death
WHAT HAS SCIENCE DONE
There must be a lawyer joke in here somewhere???
Christmas has jumped the shark
Ok, so how many millions of dollars in grant money is this going to cost us? Is there no legitimate research left to conduct?
You know, that was my first reaction also, but it might not be as dumb as it sounds. The summery says that someone showed fish recognizing melody. That is interesting. Not as interesting as a super massive black hole in the center of our galaxy, but interesting none the less. Now, consider the kind of funding that would be needed to do this study. They are not going out catching sharks and building huge aquariums with specialized facilities to do this study. They are piping Christmas music through existing speakers in an already functioning aquarium that likely is already doing other studies. Even the music is likely already pre-existing. The only costs to this study would be in keeping track of what music is playing (which would be playing anyways), logging the behavior of the sharks, which they are likely already doing, and reviewing the results when it is done.
From a non-marine biologists point of view, it would be interesting to know if the music agitates sharks. If I made only twice what I make now, I might consider making a TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION of 20 or 30 thousand dollars to an aquarium for this kind of research. It would be interesting, and I might come out financially ahead from it. From a marine biologist's point of view, I can only imagine that this is at least as interesting as I find my PC specs, or OS choice. It also could have honest to goodness practical applications. Today, sharks are likely subjected to Christmas music in aquariums anyplace that Christmas is largely celebrated. So, if the music is going to cause the animals stress, it would make sense to turn the PA system off in the aquariums.
Looks like someone has his eye on an Ignobel this year...
-l
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Wow, a sentence on slashdot that contains "Streisand" and not "Effect"...
Screw the sharks with lasers, the world is already ending!
There was a episode of Metalocyplse that portrayed the band Dethklok making metal music for fish. The song it self is "Go into the water", if you want to research it. It just seems so weird that someone would being doing something like this in real life.
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
That's animal cruelty. Stop it. It's bad enough people have to suffer through this, but at least people have iPods.
What if melody turns out to be the key to real communication with aquatic life? Let the Uplifts Begin!
A CD of whatever music the sharks like best could be released under a name like "Lullabies for Lawyers", or "Carols for Counselors".
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.