SO: DD-1 (First Timers)

Many speakers that we use for CD’s and cassettes vibrate pieces of plastic to make voices and music. You can take a speaker apart and see this plastic.

We vibrate vocal cords of skin to speak. These are located near the top of our throat in the Adam’s apple.

Birds use their syrinx to make sound vibrations.

Two air tunnels in birds come upward from the birds single-air sack lungs.

These tube-tunnels which come from the bird’s lungs have skin-like membranes in them that muscles move in and out of the air flow so they’ll fold.

Sometimes there is something like a balloon attached to the heart in a bird’s chest which make sounds like the honking of geese.

Oftentimes these skin membranes in the “air tunnels” (bronchi) of birds are attached to super-slow muscles–the slowest on earth.

These super-slow muscles in the syrinx of birds are also used for a rattlesnake’s rattle shaking.

Super-speed muscles make it so birds can make bird songs that have very fast note changes.

Some birds can sing as many notes as there are on a harmonica in a single second!

Birds can make two different sounds at the same time. Just as a piano player’s two hands can be playing two different sounds at the same time, even so many bird songs are combinations of two sound melodies.

Birds can use their lung air sacs to produce wild and beautiful overtones which add to their calls.

Bird songs are usually very simple to make. Ornithologists–people who study birds–easily understand how bird songs are made.

We beat drums, blow whistles and talk into kazoos to make noises. Besides bird calls coming from their throats, birds also use their feathers, beaks, wings and feet to make sounds. These sounds are called sonations.

The red-capped manakin does a funny moonwalk.

Snapping sounds like ones the grouse makes are thought to be caused by miniature sonic booms like jets make only it’s done by parts of the feathers.

The penguin lifts its wings over its head and vibrates them over 150 times a second!

The club-winged bird’s feathers work together like a spoon clacking on a driveway.

The white stork throws its head back and clatters its beak like a dancer with a pair of castagnettes.

One of the strangest sonations is the machine gun sound the brown sicklebill bird of paradise makes with its wings. In World War II, Japanese soldiers were crossing New Guinea. When they got to where these birds lived, the birds began firing away. The soldiers started diving for cover. The natives guiding them had a good laugh.