Eavesdropping on Dolphins
When we think about how to represent sound visually, most of us probably picture those volume-dependent sine waves. But that’s not how John Stuart Reid pictures sound. He’s patented something called a CymaScope. And he’s using it to help us learn more about how animals like dolphins communicate.
The CymaScope contains a thin film of water – basically a membrane. Sound – even at frequencies humans can’t hear – is directed at the water. The water vibrates in response, and a camera records the vibration. The end result is a spherical image of sound patterns.
Reid is working with Jack Kassewitz, a dolphin researcher in Florida. Kassewitz has recordings of dolphins in specific situations – for instance, what he knows to be distress calls from a variety of individual animals. Those calls have been imaged by the CymaScope. Kassewitz also plans to have a number of different dolphins echolocate on a ball. He hopes that’ll give us a visual picture of how dolphins recognize a ball.
It might sound far-fetched. But Reid and Kassewitz believe these sound images will provide a library of what we might call dolphin words. Which could one day let us communicate with them with their own vocabulary.
偷听海豚
当我们想到如何把声音用可视的方式表现出来的时候，很多人可能会想到用随音量变化的正玄波来做图形表示。但是John Stuart Reid可不这样做。他把他发明的CymaScope申请了专利。而且他用这项专利技术帮助我们更多地认识诸如海豚这样的动物是怎样进行交流的。
CymaScope含有一薄层水膜。声音——即使人们不能听见的频率——被导向水膜。这时水层随之振动，这些振动被一个摄像机记录下来。最后可以获得声音的球状图像。
Reid与来自弗洛里达州的海豚研究者Jack Kassewitz一起工作。Kassewitz拥有关于海豚在特定条件下的记录——比如，他所知道的来自于不同海豚的痛苦呼喊。这些呼喊被CymaScope处理成图像。Kassewitz也计划让一些不同的海豚对一个球进行声波定位。他希望这能给我们提供一幅有关海豚是如何识别球体的视觉图像。
这听起来似乎遥不可及。但是Reid 和 Kassewitz相信这些声音图像将会提供给我们所称的海豚语言的大量信息。在将来的某一天，这将会让我们和海豚用它们自己的语言进行交流。
Vocabulary:
Eavesdropping：偷听
Dolphin：海豚
Visually：视觉地
Sine waves：正玄波
Membrane：薄膜
Vibrate：振动
Echolocate：声波定位
Recognize：识别
Far-fetched：不可能的
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