MICROPHONE SHY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 June 1939, Page 3

MICROPHONE SHY

BROADCASTING DIFFICULTIES WITH ANIMALS SINGING MICE ON THE AIR. A BUDGERIGAR’S OUTBURST. “So you won’t talk, huh!” —the phrase will be familiar to all filmgoers. It is addressed at the point of the revolver by the gangster to his victim, or by G-men to the gangsters themselves. But refusal to talk is not confined to gangsters and their victims alone.

Those whose tasks it has been, at one time or another, to arrange for the broadcasting of the voices of animals have found themselves confronted with much the same difficulty. Animals, in fact, have seldom turned out to be obliging or easily manageable broadcasters, successful though they have been on occasion. Even in television, where the producer can rely on having something to show, there is the probability that the animal will take it into its head to remember the Victorian maxim about being seen but not heard. Not only do animals frequently refuse to talk, indeed to utter any sound at all when confronted with the microphone, when they do give tongue there is no knowing what they will say. With the general run of animal broadcasters this may not matter much, but with parrots and budgerigars the problem is more complicated. They are notoriously given to expressing themselves clearly and forcibly. At the same time they are among those rare and privileged speakers who cannot be asked to submit a script..

They can, of course, be made to come up for audition, but even that is not always satisfactory. Not long ago there was a budgerigar at Broadcasting House, London, which sat in silence at the microphone for twenty minutes before it looked up and remarked, “You silly old fools.” Mice as broadcasters have been rather more obliging, and an excellent performance was given by singing mice in England last week. But even they, like so many distinguished singers, proved temperamental, and though they were “on the air” in good order when the moment came, they had previously refused to utter a note until they were left by themselves in the studio with the lights out.

Some years ago there was a cat which acquired celebrity at the microphone. But the performance, which occurred during a concert, was unintentional, the cat having found its way into the studio by accident; so we can scarcely class it among the successful animal broadcasters. »

Nightingales on occasion have proved a success, but the broadcasting of nightingales is not without its difficulties, and there can be no certainty that the birds will perform on time or that they will be uninterrupted by other country sounds.

As a general rule the 8.8. C. has found that when the voice of an animal is required for broadcasting it is best for a record to be made in advance. During the past few years the recorded programmes department of the 8.8. C. has had considerable experience in the recording of animals. Foxes, llamas, monkeys, sheep, elephants and lions have all at one time or another had records made of their voices for use by the 8.8. C. as when required. So have the starlings at Charing Cross station, the gulls at Mitford Haven and a great variety of the inmates of the London Zoo. But the 8.8. C. has never been able to make a study of animal voices in any way comparable to that made by Professor Julian Huxley and Dr Ludwig Koch. The patience, the ingenuity and the complicated apparatus which have gone to the making of Dr Koch’s records exceed even the endeavours of Professor Higgins in recording the accents of Eliza Doolittle.

Many of the animals at the zoo seemed to be aware that something strange was happening when the microphone was set up, and refused to perform. In order to obtain results with lions, Dr Koch and his engineers spent 23 hours watching and waiting before anything was heard, and the wolf pack at Whipsnade were equally disobliging. An account of the many difficulties that were met with is given by Professor Huxley in a book “Animal Language,” just published. It will come as a surprise to many readers to learn that the prominent part which sound and listening play in the life of man is quite exceptional in the general scheme of Nature.

“The great majority of animals,” writes Professor Huxley, “are both deaf and dumb;'they cannot hear, and any sounds they may produce are accidental by-products, without function. Even among animals that can hear there are all grades in the efficiency of hearing, just as among those that are capable of producing functional sound, there are all grades in the variety of the sounds produced. Zoologists recognise ten or a dozen major groups or phyla among animals, each divided into a number of classes. Of these phyla, only two contain creatures that can hear or produce functional sounds.”

Few broadcasters can have been aware hitherto that their efforts would be lost to the great majority of living creatures; not merely owing to lack of interest, but because those creatures were both deaf and dumb. Music producers must, however, be grateful that the human ear, at least, is not so susceptible to outside conditions as it is in some animals. Professor Huxley tells us that recent research has shown that such creatures as tortoises may be able to hear middle C under normal conditions of temperature, but that their hearing will be limited to an octave lower if they are cold.

To quote Professor Huxley again, an animal can express emotion, but it cannot express precise thoughts. It can say, for example, “I am hungry.” but it cannot say “I want a banana.” Evidence of the. different meanings of the various sounds recorded was obtained by playing them back to other animals of the same kind and noting the effect produced. The lions in the record were represented by no fewer than six distinct sounds, , from the yelping of a young cub to the pleasure call given in captivity on recognition of a keeper. To the ordinary man. to whom a lion’s roar is a roar and nothing more, this, too, will be news. It would appear that Bottom, in claiming that he would roar as gently as any sucking dove, may have been right after all.