[HN Gopher] Life in the soil was thought to be silent - what if ...
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Life in the soil was thought to be silent - what if it isn't?
Author : ohjeez
Score : 81 points
Date : 2022-02-13 16:27 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (knowablemagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (knowablemagazine.org)
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I've long suspected that with very powerful microphones we might
| be able to hear all sorts of fascinating sounds from tiny sources
| of life, from insects on down.
|
| I'm aware of some contact microphone recordings of ants, such as
| [1] and [2], but I'm talking about much more sensitive
| recordings.. for example, what is the sound of an ant's leg
| moving (not just its footstep).. or the sound of its internal
| organs? What does insect sex or feeding sound like? There are
| many thousands of different insect species, and each of them
| could sound different.
|
| Just like electron microscopes have given us amazing views of
| insects that were unavailable to use through the naked eye, I
| suspect the soundscape on the microscopic level could be just as
| fascinating.
|
| Musicians could also use it as raw material, and process it to
| make it even more interesting. The sky is the limit.
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJa6apFGHBc
|
| [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQily-b7KKc
|
| [3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6per-2muOCQ
| grayfaced wrote:
| Most of our understanding of animal behavior comes from
| observation in their natural habitat. It would seem nearly
| impossible to observe this behavior for undersoil.
| nend wrote:
| "Almost impossible" seems a bit hyperbolic considering this is
| an article about a scientist who just made observations about
| underground behavior.
| stadium wrote:
| I'd take an opposite view that as humans, we don't know what we
| don't know, and the scope of our unknowing is much greater than
| we lend ourselves to believe.
|
| Another great example studies of mycelium networks exchanging
| nutrients with forest tree root networks. The exchange of
| nutrients has much in common with the firing of neutrons in the
| animal brain. This was discovered by "feeding" trees
| radioactive CO2 gas and observing how it moves to other trees.
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mec.15520
| ericbarrett wrote:
| When I was a kid in California, I came across a vibrant ant
| colony in a rock, a piece of fractured shale. There were so many
| ants swarming around the entrance that you could hear their
| susurration a good twenty feet (6m) away.
| AareyBaba wrote:
| susurration : whispering, murmuring, or rustling.
| Zenst wrote:
| Yes they do, and with a balanced underground contact microphone
| you can pick up lots. Though ideally you want large soil sample
| box with target animal (ants or worms) and that inside an
| acoustic chamber to rule out external noise.
|
| It's amazing how much sound there is out there, hard thing is
| filtering out the rest and capturing those low dB sounds that are
| often drowned out.
|
| Now with an array of microphones you could potentially track the
| movements of the target underground animal, but be some serious
| effort.
|
| Basic balanced contact micrphone how to build
| https://www.instructables.com/Balanced-piezo-contact-microph...
|
| Suggest adding sandwich layer that's non conductive but also good
| at picking up sound in the frequency range you are targeting -
| small shard of glass works nice, but again, it's a whole rabbit
| hole of exploration you may or may not wish to go down.
|
| I can also recommend the behringer 202hd as a good preamp on a
| budget for such a balance contact microphone.
|
| Or for something non balanced
| https://jezrileyfrench.co.uk/contact-microphones.php do top
| microphones and that model was used for many BBC Nature
| documentaries with David Attenborough. Though personally not used
| those myself.
| sumosudo wrote:
| industrial agriculture is destroying this important biome. Watch
| 'kiss the soil' on netflix and look into permaculture/forest
| style gardening. Guided natural processes could just save us from
| monocultured death.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I wonder how much we can "extract" while minimizing disruption.
| Maybe.. hopefully a new agricultural science emerges from the
| urgent need to nurture the biosphere.
| crooked-v wrote:
| As everyone knows, this was already well-documented in 1978.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsQ4CxgZ0xI&t=58s
| indymike wrote:
| This is not new, nor is it a surprise. Many animals that burrow
| have well developed senses of sound, and some even have sensory
| organs for detecting electrical charge and vibration.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| I scuba dive. Sound travels much faster and farther underwater.
| Initially, being underwater, it is very quiet. Then you start
| hearing all the noises: snapping, popping, and scraping. The
| snapping noises are from shrimp. Other noises, I don't know.
| Maybe the same principle is at play.
| samstave wrote:
| If you have ever scuba/snorkeled near coral, the groupers are
| the loudest with their beaks picking at the corals...
|
| The first time I heard it I was stunned just how loud it was.
|
| Can you imagine being a sound deadening-engineer designing
| subs? Thats some impressive capability.
|
| Recall the pic of the sub that collided with a (chinese) sub:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/Pa5cLYz
|
| I'm not one to deep dive into sub design, but that looks like a
| lot of sound damping material to me...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It hit a seamount, not a Chinese sub.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_San_Francisco_(SSN-711)
| samstave wrote:
| I am very familiar with the official story!
|
| I also watch anything and everything I can about subs, and
| the unofficial story was a chinese collision... A man can
| dream...
| edgyquant wrote:
| Doesn't sound travel slower underwater?
| EGreg wrote:
| Nope. MUCH faster
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| There must be a fair amount of friction happening as well. I
| wonder what happens to all the heat generated.
| hinkley wrote:
| Helps keep soil from freezing.
|
| The extreme case is compost, which is decay-dominated, and ends
| up full of thermophiles (not unlike wine ends up dominated by
| the yeast that made the wine). A number of people have figured
| out how to heat greenhouses, outbuildings, or in one case
| college dormitories by scaling this up.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I'd be interested in how they were able to heat the dorm with
| compost, I've laid fresh compost before and when that stuff
| is stewing it stinks.
| throwanem wrote:
| Thought by whom, and on what possible basis? Foxes hunt
| subterranean mammals and large insects by ear, and that's just
| off the top of my head.
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