The sound of a WWII dive bomber lives on in a galaxy far, far away
Q. World War II history buffs, do you know what a “Stuka Scream” is? Star Wars fans, read on. A. It’s the sound from a German warplane that would fly over a target area and dive as close to the ground as possible, releasing its payload with decent accuracy, says Dan Lewis on his “Now I Know” website. (“Stuka” is part of the German word for “dive bomber.”) The noisy engines would announce the bombers’ approach to the people below, but German engineers further enhanced the sound with small fans attached to the front of the landing gear. “Those fans acted as sirens, making the nowcommon wailing sound as the planes sped toward the Earth below.” But since the sirens reduced the planes’ airspeeds by 15 miles per hour, they were removed before the end of the war. Now on to Star Wars: The Stuka Scream was the inspiration for the TIE fighters’ galactic screech. According to “The Sound of Star Wars,” sound designer Ben Burtt “chose the sound because he liked the fact that the Germans had used the sound entirely for intimidation, as he wanted the TIE fighters to do the same thing.” Q. When might hungry leopards help out Homo sapiens? A. When they prey on feral dogs, as they do in Mumbai, India, for example, thus reducing the risk of people catching rabies, answers Amy Lewis in “New Scientist” magazine. Every year in India alone, about 20,000 people die of rabies, caused primarily by feral dogs, many of which carry the virus. At a national park near the Indian city, a team led by Christopher O’Bryan and Alexander Braczkowski from the University of Queensland, Australia, found that yearly the 35 park leopards eat 1,500 dogs and estimate this prevents “about 1,000 bite incidents per year -- and 90 potential rabies cases” (Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment). This is not to say that leopards encroaching on cities offer the same benefit. Nor does it gainsay that leopards often kill livestock and even attack humans. But, O’Bryan adds, “We just want to provide an angle that hasn’t been explored before, despite the pieces of the puzzle being in front of us the whole time.” Q. If you were asked to name the loudest animal in the sea, you might correctly guess the sperm whale, recorded at an amazing 240 decibels, or as loud as a sonic boom. But excluding the whale family, which is the next loudest sea animal: A. the Gulf corvina B. the Nassau grouper C. the bottlenose dolphin D. the silver perch? A. It’s the Gulf corvina (A), whose call at close to 180 decibels equals that of a gunshot or firecracker, answers Rachel Nuwer in Scientific American magazine.
When male Gulf corvinas mate, they produce a thumping love song that likely attracts their female counterpart, much like male crickets, cicadas and frogs (Biology Letters).
University of Texas fisheries ecologist Brad Erisman and his colleagues traveled to the Colorado River Delta, the only place where the Gulf corvinas come to spawn, perhaps due to the delta’s powerful tides that help flush their fertilized eggs out to sea. Using sonar and an underwater microphone, the team estimated as many as 1.5 million fish gathered in a 17-mile stretch of river, declaring the species to be “in a class of their own” in producing sound.
“At 177 decibels, an individual corvina’s mating call is louder than the equivalent of standing next to the stage at a rock concert,” says Nuwer. “The noise is so intense that it may harm the hearing of other marine animals caught up in the action.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS Bill is a journalist, Rich holds a doctorate in physics. Together the brothers bring you “Strange But True.” Send your questions to strangetrue@compuserve.com.