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The thesis about human speech occupying less crowded spectrum is well aligned with a book called "The Great Animal Orchestra" (https://www.amazon.com/Great-Anim
by shermantanktop 1y ago
The thesis about human speech occupying less crowded spectrum is well aligned with a book called "The Great Animal Orchestra" (https://www.amazon.com/Great-Animal-Orchestra-Finding-Origins/dp/0316086878 https://www.amazon.com/Great-Animal-Orchestra-Finding-Origin...).
That author details how the "dawn chorus" is composed of a vast number of species making noise, but who are able to pick out mating calls and other signals due to evolving their vocalizations into unique sonic niches.
It's quite interesting but also a bit depressing as he documents the decline in intensity of this phenomenon with habitat destruction etc.
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y agoBirds have also evolved to choose when to vocalize to best be heard - doing so earlier in urban areas where later there will be more traffic noise, and later in some forest environments to avoid being drowned out by the early rising noisy insects.
- HaroldBrill 1y agoMy friend, through all these voluminous deafening comments, we certainly heard your loaded minimalist beautiful tune by you simply broadcasting your marvelous name!
- kulahan 1y agoProbably worth mentioning that as evolutions that allow them to compete well in nature die out, ones that allow them to compete well in cities takes their place. Evolution is always a series of tradeoffs. Maybe we don't have sonic variation, but temporal instead.
- bitwize 1y agoLife uh, finds a way.
- jibal 1y agoThe dying out of birds "in nature" and the adaptations to cities are largely independent as they occur in different populations.
- kulahan 1y agoIt's about filling open niches. City birds were an open niche for a long time. The ones who adapted to handle that better are thriving in better population numbers than those which can only survive with 13 specific types of trees. Even still, among the populations of birds not adapting to the city, they are being forcibly adapted in other ways. If the reach is too big, they die. This is how evolution works, and has always worked. The world shifts, and those who can handle it thrive, while those who can't, suffer. It's the reason mammals are running the planet today when it was lizards just a couple million years ago.
- didroe 1y agoThe problem is that evolution works on a much longer timescale than the pace of change to the environment that humans cause.
- paulgerhardt 1y agoWhile I understand the spirit of this comment, if you look at the fossil record you’ll see that’s objectively not true. Roughly half of the shifts in the last 11 evolutionary periods, over the last 500 million years, were caused by changes that occurred in a-few-hours-to-a-few-thousand-years with 75%-90% species lost. Evolution did not fail to work then.
- fluoridation 1y agoI think GP meant "evolution without catastrophic biodiversity bottlenecks". Of course evolution will "work" as long as a single species survives.
- jibal 1y agoYou are tautologically saying that massive shifts resulted from massive changes, but that doesn't contradict the statement about evolution--which is about far more than such "shifts" (not an aspect of nature but rather changes large enough for humans to perceive)--operating over long time periods. Every single instance of offspring is a "shift" from its progenitors. Also talking about evolution failing to work is a category mistake--evolution is an ongoing process that is the inevitable result of imperfectly replicating biological mechanisms and there's no "succeed" or "fail" about it.