Roger Payne

For our next segment, we have what am I listening to this week? And I am listening to And God Created Great Whales by Alan Hovhannes.

In 1970, he asked an orchestra to play along with real recordings of humpback whales singing made by a scientist named Roger Payne.

Now, I'm including a link in the description, and your mission is to listen for the moment the orchestra copies a whale with their instruments.

Can you hear the instruments trying to swoop long and slow, just like real whale voices? Long, slow waves make low notes, and it's pretty cool to hear.

Yeah.

So the classic proof of concept experiment here is Roger Payne's 1971 study.

So he raised a barn owl in a completely light-sealed room.

So he, think, like, [laughs] Project Hail Mary, um-

Crazy.

Cool.

No, but that experiment by Roger Payne really reminded me of this, uh, uh, I think it's, like, less detailed than the movie, but in the book, he goes into, like, really big studies to figure out this thing that he's studying, so it's a, and he does, like, no light exposure.

It's kinda cool.

In controlled experiments, a hunt could proceed even when visible light was absent, leaving sound to provide the essential information about the prey's location, showing that this happens required a way of watching events that the human observer could not see.

Roger Payne investigated the ability experimentally, using infrared filming to record hunting in darkness.

Infrared radiation lies beyond the visible range.

Suitable recording equipment can use it to produce an image where ordinary filming with visible light would fail.