Throwback Thursday: music, whales and frog-mouths

How music led Daniel DeLeon to study the ocean with machine learning:

A young man turns his passion and background in music in to something else.

Daniel didn't know what engineering was when he started community college. Now he's making breakthroughs, using machine learning to track endangered whales.

It was through the study of physics that Daniel was able to identify and demonstrate different whale sounds, using a software package called Tensor-flow - even to the point of showing how the sound waves 'looked' using this software.

With the ocean covering nearly 3/4 of the earth's surface, and most of it not being penetrated by light, many of its inhabitants (including whales) are able to communicate using sound (sonar) waves by a method called 'echo-location'.

Apparently, the whales that he studies (the Blue and Fin whales) make some of the loudest and deepest (sub-sonic) sounds on this planet.  Many animals who live in darkness need to use this technique so they can be aware of their surroundings - and this may be a combination of both high-pitched and low-pitched sounds.  Bats, for example, do this.  Animals can pick up an amazing array of sounds and pitches not easily detectable by the human ear.  If you have pets (especially dogs or cats), you will find they can get quite agitated when they sense a storm (or some other 'natural' disaster) happening.  It shows how we can learn from animals and their behavioural patterns, and then to transfer that knowledge into ways we can protect ourselves, care for the environment and make the world a better place to live in.

You can see more of this article here: https://www.google.com.au/about/stories/soundwaves/?utm_source=AU&utm_medium=HPP&utm_campaign=Daniel-DeLeon

cheers,

Colleen (who likes to hear the *equally* beautiful [if not more] sounds of the Tawny Frog-mouth herself) 🦉🦉🦉

2013 (c) Colleen Sedgwick: A Whale's Tale

2012 (c) Colleen Sedgwick: Hooting Frog-mouth

What a frog-mouth actually looks like - I happened to spot this creature and managed to photograph it through the glass window pane (of the balcony door).