Katy Payne | |
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 Payne in 2009 | |
| Born | Katharine Boynton 1937 (age 86–87) |
| Alma mater | Cornell University |
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Katharine Boynton "Katy" Payne (born 1937) is an American zoologist and researcher in the Bioacoustics Research Program at the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University. Payne studied music and biology in college and after a decade doing research in the savanna elephant country in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Namibia, she founded Cornell's Elephant Listening Project in 1999. [1]
Payne was born Katharine Boynton in Ithaca, New York, in 1937. Her father was a Cornell University professor and her grandfather was the wildlife illustrator Louis Agassiz Fuertes. [2] Payne attended Cornell, where she met Roger Payne, then a graduate student. They married in 1960. [3]
Initially a researcher of whales with her then husband, Payne turned to investigating elephants after observing them at the Oregon Zoo in Portland. In 1984, she and other researchers such as Joyce Poole discovered that elephants make infrasonic calls to one another that might be detectable at distances as far as ten kilometers. [4] [5] The calls aided in travel and mating. Payne founded the Elephant Listening Project (ELP) to use these calls as a means of measuring the behavior of elephants and the size of the elephant population. Payne was featured in the 1984 PBS series The Voyage of the Mimi .
In 2004, Payne's initial recordings of elephants were selected as one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.
Payne and her husband worked at sea to Bermuda in 1968. With the help of a Navy engineer, Frank Watlington monitored hydrophones many miles into the sea to capture the sounds of the humpback whales. After 31 years of analyzing the recordings. Payne discovered the predictable ways in which the whales change their songs each season and, with her colleague Linda Guinee, also discovered that whales use rhymes in their songs. [2] The spectrograms of the whale voices showed peaks, valleys, and gaps. The visual representation of the whales vocalization looked like melodies and rhythms according to Payne. [6]
The concept behind the Elephant Listening Project began to form in 1984 when Katy Payne, observing elephants in the Portland Zoo, discovered that elephants communicate in low frequencies. [7] After four months in Portland, Cornell University's acoustic biologists Carl Hopkins and Bob Capranica partnered with Payne to record and measure the infrasonic communication and behavior of elephants. By 1999 Payne published her elephant discoveries in her book Silent Thunder, [8] and the Elephant Listening Project was officially founded in the Laboratory of Ornithology to focus on long-term research on forest elephants.
In 2005 Katy Payne retired and Peter Wrege took over the project. Since then the ELP has been listening to and studying elephant communication in the forests of Central Africa, applying Payne's insights to further her findings and to support the conservation of elephants. Co-founder of the ELP, Andrea Turkalo, conducts the longest-running study of forest elephants, at the Dzanga forest clearing in the Central African Republic. Turkalo has identified more than 4,000 individual elephants and has tracked their family relationships, social behavior, history of visits to the clearing, and reproduction. These data provide the most complete source of material available for understanding forest elephant demography and behavior.
The ELP has ongoing monitoring studies in Gabon, Republic of Congo, and Cameroon. Through the use of autonomous sound recorders, the ELP can monitor changes in elephant activity in response to environmental conditions and changing human commercial activity in the forests, and is using the detection of poaching activity to inform and improve anti-poaching patrol strategies. [9]
Elephants are the largest living land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantidae and the order Proboscidea; extinct relatives include mammoths and mastodons. Distinctive features of elephants include a long proboscis called a trunk, tusks, large ear flaps, pillar-like legs, and tough but sensitive grey skin. The trunk is prehensile, bringing food and water to the mouth and grasping objects. Tusks, which are derived from the incisor teeth, serve both as weapons and as tools for moving objects and digging. The large ear flaps assist in maintaining a constant body temperature as well as in communication. African elephants have larger ears and concave backs, whereas Asian elephants have smaller ears and convex or level backs.
Echolocation, also called bio sonar, is a biological active sonar used by several animal groups, both in the air and underwater. Echolocating animals emit calls and listen to the echoes of those calls that return from various objects near them. They use these echoes to locate and identify the objects. Echolocation is used for navigation, foraging, and hunting prey.
Infrasound, sometimes referred to as low frequency sound, describes sound waves with a frequency below the lower limit of human audibility. Hearing becomes gradually less sensitive as frequency decreases, so for humans to perceive infrasound, the sound pressure must be sufficiently high. While the ear is the primary organ for sensing low sound, at higher intensities it is possible to feel infrasound vibrations in various parts of the body.
The African forest elephant is one of the two living species of African elephant. It is native to humid tropical forests in West Africa and the Congo Basin. It is the smallest of the three living elephant species, reaching a shoulder height of 2.4 m. As with other African elephants, both sexes have straight, down-pointing tusks, which begin to grow once the animals reach 1–3 years old. The forest elephant lives in highly sociable family groups of up to 20 individuals. Since they forage primarily on leaves, seeds, fruit, and tree bark, they have often been referred to as the 'megagardener of the forest'; the species is one of many that contributes significantly to maintaining the composition, diversity and structure of the Guinean Forests of West Africa and the Congolese rainforests. Seeds of various plants will go through the elephant’s digestive tract and eventually pass through in the animal’s droppings, thus helping to maintain the spread and biodiversity of the forests.
Animal languages are forms of non-human animal communication that show similarities to human language. Animals communicate through a variety of signs, such as sounds or movements. Signing among animals may be considered a form of language if the inventory of signs is large enough. The signs are relatively arbitrary, and the animals seem to produce them with a degree of volition. In experimental tests, animal communication may also be evidenced through the use of lexigrams by chimpanzees and bonobos.
Whales use a variety of sounds for communication and sensation. The mechanisms used to produce sound vary from one family of cetaceans to another. Marine mammals, including whales, dolphins, and porpoises, are much more dependent on sound than land mammals due to the limited effectiveness of other senses in water. Sight is less effective for marine mammals because of the particulate way in which the ocean scatters light. Smell is also limited, as molecules diffuse more slowly in water than in air, which makes smelling less effective. However, the speed of sound is roughly four times greater in water than in the atmosphere at sea level. As sea mammals are so dependent on hearing to communicate and feed, environmentalists and cetologists are concerned that they are being harmed by the increased ambient noise in the world's oceans caused by ships, sonar and marine seismic surveys.
Zoomusicology is the study of the musical aspects of sound and communication as produced and perceived by animals. It is a field of musicology and zoology, and is a type of zoosemiotics. Zoomusicology as a field dates to François-Bernard Mâche's 1983 book Music, Myth, and Nature, or the Dolphins of Arion, and has been developed more recently by scholars such as Dario Martinelli, David Rothenberg, Hollis Taylor, David Teie, and Emily Doolittle.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a member-supported unit of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, which studies birds and other wildlife. It is housed in the Imogene Powers Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity in Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary. Approximately 250 scientists, professors, staff, and students work in a variety of programs devoted to the Lab's mission: interpreting and conserving the Earth's biological diversity through research, education, and citizen science focused on birds. Work at the Lab is supported primarily by its 75,000 members.
Animal song is not a well-defined term in scientific literature, and the use of the more broadly defined term vocalizations is in more common use. Song generally consists of several successive vocal sounds incorporating multiple syllables. Some sources distinguish between simpler vocalizations, termed “calls”, reserving the term “song” for more complex productions. Song-like productions have been identified in several groups of animals, including cetaceans, avians (birds), anurans (frogs), and humans. Social transmission of song has been found in groups including birds and cetaceans.
Roger Searle Payne was an American biologist and environmentalist famous for his 1967 discovery of whale song among humpback whales. Payne later became an important figure in the worldwide campaign to end commercial whaling.
Prusten is a form of communicative behaviour exhibited by some members of the family Felidae. Prusten is also referred to as chuffing or chuffle. It is described as a short, low intensity, non-threatening vocalization. In order to vocalize a chuff, the animal's mouth is closed and air is blown through the nostrils, producing a breathy snort. It is typically accompanied by a head bobbing movement. It is often used between two cats as a greeting, during courtship, or by a mother comforting her cubs. The vocalization is produced by tigers, jaguars, snow leopards, clouded leopards and even polar bears. Prusten has significance in both the fields of evolution and conservation.
Ultrasound avoidance is an escape or avoidance reflex displayed by certain animal species that are preyed upon by echolocating predators. Ultrasound avoidance is known for several groups of insects that have independently evolved mechanisms for ultrasonic hearing. Insects have evolved a variety of ultrasound-sensitive ears based upon a vibrating tympanic membrane tuned to sense the bat's echolocating calls. The ultrasonic hearing is coupled to a motor response that causes evasion of the bat during flight.
The Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve is a protected reserve of southwestern Central African Republic. It was established in 1990 and covers 6,865.54 km2 (2,650.80 sq mi). It is one of several areas within the Dzanga-Sangha Complex of Protected Areas (DSCPA), each within its own protective status and along with Lobéké National Park in Cameroon and Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in Republic of Congo, it is part of the Sangha Trinational Landscape. Other areas within the DSCPA include the Dzanga Ndoki National Park which has two sectors, the 495 km2 (191 sq mi) Dzanga park and the 725 km2 (280 sq mi) Ndoki park. A conference of the Ministers of Forests of Central African Forest Commission (COMIFAC) had resolved to establish within the Congo basin, the Sangha River Tri-national Protected area (STN) encompassing these three parks. The forest special reserve is operated by the Central African Forest Commission (COMIFAC).
Seismic or vibrational communication is a process of conveying information through mechanical (seismic) vibrations of the substrate. The substrate may be the earth, a plant stem or leaf, the surface of a body of water, a spider's web, a honeycomb, or any of the myriad types of soil substrates. Seismic cues are generally conveyed by surface Rayleigh or bending waves generated through vibrations on the substrate, or acoustical waves that couple with the substrate. Vibrational communication is an ancient sensory modality and it is widespread in the animal kingdom where it has evolved several times independently. It has been reported in mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, arachnids, crustaceans and nematode worms. Vibrations and other communication channels are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but can be used in multi-modal communication.
Infrasound is sound at frequencies lower than the low frequency end of human hearing threshold at 20 Hz. It is known, however, that humans can perceive sounds below this frequency at very high pressure levels. Infrasound can come from many natural as well as man-made sources, including weather patterns, topographic features, ocean wave activity, thunderstorms, geomagnetic storms, earthquakes, jet streams, mountain ranges, and rocket launchings. Infrasounds are also present in the vocalizations of some animals. Low frequency sounds can travel for long distances with very little attenuation and can be detected hundreds of miles away from their sources.
NOC was a beluga whale who made human-like vocalizations. He was captured by Inuit hunters for the United States Navy in 1977 and lived in captivity until his death in 1999. In 1984, researchers from the National Marine Mammal Foundation discovered his unusual ability to mimic the rhythm and tone of human speech. Belugas' human-like voices had been described in the past, but NOC's voice was the first to have been recorded.
Songs of the Humpback Whale is a 1970 album produced by bio-acoustician Roger Payne. It publicly demonstrated for the first time the elaborate whale vocalizations of humpback whales. Selling over 100,000 copies, it became the bestselling environmental album in history, and its sales benefited the Wildlife Conservation Society's Whale Fund, of which Payne was Scientific Director, and which sought to conserve whales through research and public education. By raising awareness of the intelligence and culture of whales, the album helped spawn a worldwide ”Save The Whales” movement, leading to the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment ten-year global moratorium on commercial whaling.
Rohini Balakrishnan is an Indian bioacoustics expert. She is a senior Professor and Chair of the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. Her research focuses on animal behavior through the lens of animal communication and bioacoustics.
Joyce Hatheway Poole is a biologist, ethologist, conservationist, and co-founder/scientific director of ElephantVoices. She is a world authority on elephant reproductive, communicative, and cognitive behavior.
Elephants communicate with each other in various ways, including touching, visual displays, vocalisations, seismic vibrations, and semiochemicals.
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