The other week I was thinking about bringing various different animal songs into a comparable tempo and wondering how that might sound.
Of course, I am far from the first to have considered this. Indeed, the polymath David Rothenberg hasn't just thought about this, he has acted upon it.
On this website you can hear more of this tempo-adjustment, with the sounds of birds, whales, frogs and insects.
It's actually satisfying to learn that someone else has considered the analogies and correlations. And to be able to listen to these recordings.
Of course, I've now had to get a couple of Rothenberg's books.
On the subject of song, when I present one of my animal culture offerings, one that is about orcas, the person who speaks just after me will also be talking about killer whale culture. It seems that her area of interest is "the vocalizing behaviour and communication of killer whales, and what may be inferred from their vocalizations about their sentience, cognitive capacities and emotions, lives and culture." She is a philosopher based at the Foundations of Animal Sentience centre at the LSE.
Isn't that interesting! At the naturetempo site I listened to the humpback whale and the cricket -- so far. I imagine it's a BIG area to explore and much much more to be composed. Music could be the way for us to better appreciate another species -- even though so much of what is being communicated remains a mystery. But who knows what lies ahead.