Humans like to collect, be it gold or sound.
If you would like to get to know animals more through sound, or maybe use these sounds for any creative project you have in mind, there are amazing sound collections out there. We give you our favourite 3.
The Animal Sound Archive at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is one of the oldest and most comprehensive collection of animal sound recordings in the world.
Researchers at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology have, for the past century or so, recorded, collected and compiled the most extensive animal sounds library in the world. Called the Macaulay Library, it features 150,000 recordings of 9,000 species, including three-quarters of all known birds to science.
Some highlights from the Macaluay Library:
- a 1929 recording by Cornell Lab founder Arthur Allen of a song sparrow: http://bit.ly/V6ZFMG;
- an ostrich chick still inside its egg: http://bit.ly/XbaKqT;
- a dawn chorus in tropical Queensland, Australia, bursting with warbles, squeals, whistles, booms and hoots: http://bit.ly/VI2EJV;
- the sound of a lemur with a voice that is part moan, part jazz clarinet: http://bit.ly/VYo8l4;
- the haunting voice of a common loon on an Adirondacks lake: http://bit.ly/13ztiY7;
- the UFO-like call of a bird-of-paradise called the curl-crested manucode in New Guinea:http://bit.ly/Xbb1Ko; and
- the staccato hammering sounds of a walrus under water: http://bit.ly/13zpLbi.
And a bit of a less extensive one, but fun anyway: