Dolphin Speakers
Monday, May 14, 2012 at 8:15AM
Dolphins are canny buggers and quite good communicators. It's widely acknowledged that the squeaks and whistles of dolphin talk carry a lot of information. Pity we can't understand what they're saying. Heck, we can't even hear what they're saying.
Dolphins, you see, speak in a wide range of frequencies, from 20Hz (bass we puny humans can only feel and not hear) to 150,000 Hz (which is far, far beyond the range of even a dog's hearing). Complicating things is that dolphin talk can use all these frequencies at the same time.
But now, progress. Yuka Mishima at Tokyo University has invented a speaker capable of reproducing the mix of low and high frequencies of dolphin talk. The goal is to use this speaker to broadcast dolphin communications to other dolphins as part of their research into their acoustic abilities.
How long before some high-end speaker manufacturer licenses this technology for consumer use?
Source: The Observer 13 May 2012, "Openings for Dolphin Speakers"
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