STRANGE BUT TRUE
Q: What pretechnological form of wireless communication can efficiently convey news, gossip or extend a breakfast invitation?
A: For centuries, the now-dying tradition of whistled speech enabled sheep or goat herders to communicate from one hillside to another, since whistles “carry much farther than shouts and spare the vocal cords,” says linguist and bioacoustician Julien Meyer in Scientific American magazine. In one valley near the French Alps, “spoken speech carried 40 meters, shouts 200 meters, whereas a whistle was still intelligible at 700 meters.” Not a separate language or dialect but rather an extension of a native tongue, it has been likened to a whisper where the vibration of the vocal cords is not engaged.
Based on field work done all over the world, Meyer and other researchers have identified about 70 populations who use whistled speech, most hailing from isolated mountainous or densely vegetated locations. As their work continues, more such languages will be discovered, “provided that their ways of living are not threatened by modernity.” As a safeguard, the Canary Islands, for one, made teaching of the whistled Silbo Gomera mandatory in primary schools in 1999, even setting up a government program to develop whistling teachers.
As the magazine highlights, “A whistled language represents both a cultural heritage and a way to study how the brain processes information.”
Q: With deer-hunting season approaching, laypeople may wonder why hunters wear “blaze orange” outer garments. Wouldn’t that make them stand out to the deer?
A: According to researchers Karl Miller and Gino D’Angelo, deer do not perceive the longer wavelengths of color, says Dan Lewis on his Now I Know website. Thus, the oranges and reds turn into brown or gray.
Moreover, wearing hunter orange is required by law in most states since it’s been shown to save lives and prevent injuries. As reported in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, between 1961 and 1970, nearly 14 people a year were killed and 95 hunters were injured in firearms-related hunting accidents. But over the last 10 years, those numbers had dropped to two deaths and 23 injuries per year.
Concludes Lewis: “So it makes a lot of sense for hunters to wear orange — their fellow hunters can see them, but the deer, not so much.”
Q: They’re the most common terrestrial vertebrates in the forest — skinny, lungless amphibians just a few inches long, yet so abundant they can influence and protect vast ecosystems. What are they?
A: They’re the red-backed salamanders, and in America’s forests, they actually weigh more than all the nearby birds and mammals combined, says Geoffrey Giller in Discover magazine. According to biologist Cari-Ann Hickerson, “… their voracious nature and their numbers make these salamanders crucial parts of the forest food web,” eating the bugs that eat or break down dead leaves, keeping prey population under control and providing protein-rich prey for larger animals.
Adds biologist Michael Best: With their ability to slow down leaf decay, they may be able to “sequester 80 tons of carbon on the forest floor every year,” equal to a car driving 650,000 miles. Also, they can stash nutrients both in their bodies and in surrounding leaves, keeping them around until utilized by other organisms. “I like to think of them as stewards of the forest.”
BILL SONES AND RICH SONES, FOR THE OKLAHOMAN Send questions to brothers Bill and Rich Sones at sbtcolumn@gmail.com.