Voices of Animals

If from a distance one were to listen to the thousand noises and sounds of all kinds that arise from the throbbing of life in a large town, these all would seemingly be lost in one low hum resembling the vibrations of a huge tuning-fork, and appearing as but a single tone. Even thus the entire volume of sound coming from our planet would seem as a single tone to one soaring far above the earth, and capable of hearing through vast distances. Similar sounds would arise from other worlds and thus would be produced a veritable music of the spheres, sounding on into the infinite.

Pierre has written a very curious book on the harmonies of Nature.

English Vocabulary - List of Animal Sounds

Palissy has made numerous ingenious observations on the melodies of plants and trees, which Lamartine, through his book on "Great Men," has rescued from oblivion. It is a well-known fact that every metal has a sound peculiar to itself. So, too, the voices of animals have at all times played an important part in Nature—now looked upon by man with superstitious awe, and anon observed with the eye of Science. In olden times the priests and the tillers of the soil were the ones to pay attention to the voices of animals—the priests, to be guided by them in their oracles; the peasants, to learn of changes in the weather and coming storms.

It seems rather strange that the observation and the understanding of the voices of animals have become more and more of a lost art with the advance of civilization, so called; and it appears almost an anomaly that in these times a scholar like M. Louis Nicolardot, of Paris, should turn his attention, with all the thoroughness of science, yet in a most charming and entertaining manner, to a study of the voices of Nature. He has done this in a work entitled "La Fontaine and the Human Comedy.

La Fontaine endows Nature with the voice of man, to mirror the manners, the faults, and the vices of mankind. It is very interesting to study more particularly the animal world with reference to its various voices, and to follow out the meaning of these voices in the great concert of Nature. As Nicolardot has ascertained, there is more dumbness in the animal world than is generally supposed.

This dumbness, however, is rarely absolute, but rather more an inability to form articulated sounds. Every animal of the higher orders is possessed of some sort of tone expressive of pain or joy, and by means of this it can make itself understood by its kind. Fish can produce no sound in the water, because air is lacking as a medium to propagate the waves of sound; and yet we incline to the belief that the water itself may admit of the forming of some kind of sound-waves, which the fish perhaps may be capable of exciting, and which will be experienced and comprehended by other fish.

As far as we are concerned, of course, fish will remain mute, as the element in which they live is one into whose conditions of existence we may never enter, and that to us means death. But even among our domestic animals, the dog heading the list, there reigns, to our ear at least, a dumbness well-nigh absolute, broken only occasionally by faint and forcibly uttered sounds. In very cold and in very hot climates there are certain dog races that never bark, a fact already referred to by Captain Cook in the account of his voyages.

Popular Science Monthly/Volume 30/January 1887/The Voices of Animals

In Asia there is a species of dog called colsuns which never barks. It is to be found chiefly in the Deccan, in the mountains of Nilgiri and in the woodlands on the coast of Coromandel. Also among the birds, by poets so often styled "the singers of the forest," there are many kinds that are mute. Two varieties of sparrows, the tangara of Brazil and the senegali at the Senegal, are said never to emit a sound; and in Australia there are larks quite similar to those of our own country, but which never sing. The real singing of birds is done only in spring-time, to greet anew Nature's awakening.

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During the rest of the year even the best singers of the woods confine themselves to simple chirping notes of woe or joy. Nicolardot believes that the song of birds may be regarded as the original fount of all music, and according to his view each musical instrument was originally only devised to imitate the voice of some bird. Bringing to bear a considerable knowledge of natural history and perhaps an equal amount of charming fancy, he traces the whole orchestra of to-day back to the voices of birds.

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He demonstrates that for every instrument—the clarionet, the flute, the oboe, the trombone, the trumpet, and all the rest—a bird may be named that bears the fundamental tone of such instrument in its throat, and which has been copied by man in the making of the instrument. To the nightingale he assigns in this bird-orchestra the part of the organ, and even the rattling of the castanets he would trace to the peculiar noise made by some birds of prey with their bill.

Besides their songs with which they greet Spring, and their notes of pain and joy, birds have still other sounds which they use only on certain occasions. Many birds, besides the rooster, herald the early dawn and sunrise with certain peculiar notes. Among these are the lark, the linnet, the curlew, the plover, the lapwing, and the bittern.

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Quite a number of birds announce the coming of rain; for instance, the magpie, the owl, the yellow thrush, and the greenfinch. This is also done by means of peculiar notes which they never sound on other occasions. Nicolardot has essayed to reproduce these notes by letters. There also are storm-birds, so-called procellaria , which in a similar manner—that is to say, by the use of certain peculiar sounds—predict the coming of a storm, even a long time in advance.

Domestic fowl are often watchful for strangers; especially is this the case with peacocks, who are pretty sure to announce by cries the approach of strangers to house or farm. Birds thus can feel and announce the coming of rain and storm, and already the ancients ascribed to them the faculty of prediction. In their flight and in their voices indications of coming events were sought.

The augurs of old had established a whole science of the flight and the voices of birds. Nor is it improbable that training was resorted to, to aid in procuring such predictions—that is to say, to create favorable or unfavorable omens, whichever might happen to best suit the plans of the priests at the time. Louis Napoleon, in our nineteenth century, intended to convince the French people, by the aid of a trained eagle which was to have alighted on his head at the right moment, that he was the predestined successor to his great uncle.

Nicolardot does not go quite so far as the augurs of the ancients, but he also ascribes to birds a prescience of coming events, especially of approaching misfortune, to which feeling they lend expression by certain peculiar sounds. As an example he cites a tale from O'Meara's "Voice from St.

From there these birds, to which the ancients ascribed great sagacity, came flying down close to the heads of the soldiers, flapped their wings, and kept up a continuous, monotonous croaking.

The troops were much disheartened by this occurrence, and feared misfortune. Shortly before the terrible conflagration broke out, all the ravens had disappeared, flying away in great numbers. Napoleon I paid considerable attention to the voices of animals. O'Meara cites the following from a conversation of the emperor's: Does it not seem to be very presuming on our part to deny the existence of such a language, simply because we do not understand it?

We know that a horse has a memory, that it can make distinctions, that it shows antipathy and sympathy; it knows its master, and can tell him from the servants, although it sees the master but rarely, and has the grooms for company throughout the day. This animal always showed his joy whenever the emperor mounted him. He would permit but one groom in whose care he was placed to get on his back, but, when this groom was the rider, the whole bearing and movements of the horse were different from what they were when the emperor rode him.

In the former case the horse seemed to be fully conscious that his rider was but a subordinate. When the emperor had lost his way while out riding or hunting, he simply placed the reins on the neck of this horse, and he had always speedily and surely found the right way.

Voices of animals

Whenever the emperor approached, the horse gave expression to his joy by a special sort of neighing, and often it had seemed to Napoleon as if the animal were trying to tell him something. Nicolardot, basing his assertion on experience, maintains that each animal has a language of its own, and that it is simply due to the imperfection of our organs that we do not understand this language. In this connection we would mention that Kasper Hauser, the well-known foundling, who had eaten no meat up to his twenty-first year, insisted at the time, shortly after he was found, and before he had grown accustomed to animal food, that he understood the language of all animals, and that very often, when a dog barked or a bird chirped, he knew exactly what was meant.

The animals approached him without fear, and seemed to be conscious that he could understand them, but this all came to an end when he began to take animal food. Hence, it might be inferred that the eating of meat tends to remove us from the animal world and to weaken our understanding of its ways. But, if we turn our whole attention to animals, our superior intellect will soon place us in the way of understanding their language.

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