Acoustic News

For Jake Robinson, Greno Woods was an easy choice. This large, old forest in South Yorkshire county in the U.K. has historically undergone timber harvesting, quarrying and fires. Plantations of…

Flitting through the forest foliage, darting between branches and flawlessly negotiating their way around gargantuan tree trunks, bats have evolved exquisite adaptations to their forest homes. Although inaudible to human…

Tropical forests awaken the senses. The scent of moist earth, the feel of sticky, humid air, and the sight of an array of colorful life-forms are visceral delights. But perhaps…

Healthy ecosystems are often noisy places: from reefs to grasslands and forests, these are sonically rich thanks to all the species defending territories, finding mates, locating prey, or perhaps enjoying…

The last 80 Irrawaddy dolphins that inhabit the Mahakam River in Indonesian Borneo lead precarious lives. Their forays to find fish are frequently thwarted, sometimes fatally so, by a series…

A gunshot explodes through the rainforest, followed by what sounds like branches falling from a tree. A dog barks. "Tito, did I hit it?” a man asks his companion in…

When a trio of beaked whales surfaced off Mexico’s Pacific coast, researchers thought they’d found the elusive Perrin’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon perrini), an endangered species that’s never been officially sighted…

European spiny lobsters create quite the rumble. By rubbing an antenna across its face, a spiny lobster can create a sound that might, under the right underwater conditions, be detectable…

Baby whales, like all young mammals, rely on their mother’s milk for their early development. A new video follows a nursing humpback whale and her calf and takes the calf’s…

The Con X Tech Prize just announced its second round will be funding 20 finalists each with $3,500 to create their first prototypes. Some 150 teams submitted ideas that use…

While we fumble and crash without any light, bats zipping away in the dark, effortlessly skirting obstacles and pouncing on prey, seem magical. To better understand this ability of bats…

In April 2015, researchers headed out to the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean to service acoustic receivers they had dotted around the archipelago, and to download tag data from…

Wind turbines are a valuable source of renewable energy, but they’re eco-unfriendly in one particular way: the giant spinning blades frequently kill birds and bats. A new system that jams…

When you’re new to an area, it takes time to settle in. We all want a comfortable place to live, in a safe neighborhood, with convenient access to shops and…

On today’s episode, we welcome Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Butler to discuss the biggest rainforest news stories of 2018 and what storylines to watch in 2019. He also discusses…

There’s a lot to listen for in a tropical forest. There’s the sound of life: the howls, the hoots, the croaks. There’s the sound of loss: the buzz of chainsaws,…

You can now speak into your mobile phone and have it produce written text. Then have Google translate your words into Japanese, or Hindi. In two seconds. These examples of…

Monitoring technology deployed in a remote rainforest over time subjects it to high heat, humidity, and rainfall, as well as potential damage by insects and other wildlife. When you add…

Technology users and tech developers don’t always talk directly to each other, but they should. The relatively small size of the scientific/conservation community and its need for a particular suite…

Researchers have developed a web-based application to enable citizen scientists to listen to the sounds of killer whales in the northeast Pacific in real time. Publicly launched on Nov. 1,…

An international team of scientists has developed a method to assess the detection area of acoustic monitoring devices. These instruments, which can record the calls and other sounds of animals…

South American bats speak dialects different from those of their North American counterparts. In response, a group of scientists has developed the first artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm for acoustic identification…

It’s June, and migratory songbirds in the northern hemisphere are at their summer breeding grounds, having traveled thousands of miles from their warm-weather overwintering areas. Birds migrate as far north…

On today’s episode, we take a look at soundscape phenology and the emerging role it’s playing in the study of animal behavior and landscape ecology. Listen here: The Mongabay Newscast…

New technologies are generating far more information than ever before to help scientists assess and predict the health and behavior of species and ecosystems, as well as the threats they…

The well-known trumpeting call of an elephant indicates anger or alarm. The more common but less familiar rumbles are a range of low-frequency sounds that elephants use to communicate different…

Fish talk. They boom, buzz, croak, and chatter. They even create a dawn chorus similar to birds. Shrimp vocalize too, by snapping and popping. A reef’s soundscape—the variety of sounds…

On today’s episode: the sounds of Buller’s shearwaters in New Zealand’s Poor Knights Islands. Listen here: Our guest today is Megan Friesen, a behavioral ecologist who is currently working with…

In October last year, a team of scientists were out on a night hike surveying bats in the forests of the Penang Hill in the Malaysian state of Penang when…

Years of studying birds and their relationship with their environment taught John Swaddle, professor of biology at the College of William & Mary, the importance of understanding animals’ instincts and…