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51. Catching Up With Nature
A Radio Talk by Charles F. Kettering
Recently, Dr. Black conducted on the General
Motors' Symphony, the
overture by Johann Strauss "Die Fledermaus" or "The Bat." I have often
wondered if the composer knew at the time he wrote this that the bat
had a voice of great range. The voice however is pitched mostly above
the ability of the human ear to detect.
I was discussing this with a musical friend of mine and I asked
him if he knew of this peculiarity. He said he had never heard of it
but he was very curious to know why the bat had this high pitched voice
and how he used it. So - I told him of the work that had been done by
two professors at Harvard and added that there were other animals such
as cats and dogs who, in addition to their audible voices, were able to
communicate with each other in inaudible sounds.
Now most people regard the bat as a rather
objectionable, somewhat
loathe some creature that lives in dark caves and comes out only in the
evening and flies around to hunt for food. The thing that makes this
more interesting is that tests made in many of the caves where the bats
live show that there is insufficient light to register on our most
delicate apparatus. These devices can detect light much below the point
of visibility. Now the bat can fly around in these caves apparently as
well as if they were fully lighted.
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