Episode Detail: Calls of the Wild - Scientific American Frontiers
Host Alan Alda joins scientists as they eavesdrop on birds and bees (and bats, elephants and flies) in attempts to decipher what they're saying and hearing. The birds (male chestnut-sided warblers in the Berkshires) sing love songs to amorous--and hardly monogomous---females. Elephants make seismic “rumbles” that can travel 40 miles, a Stanford professor has found. In Panama, Alda observes Smithsonian researchers as they listen in while bats paint “sound pictures” of their prey, and tag bees to try to figure our their sound patterns. And Cornell scientists think that clues to enhancing human hearing can be found in flies' ears.
