Exposition

Taiwanese Bush Warblers imitating garbage trucks: a mutual affair? (2016)

Mark van Tongeren

About this exposition

All over Taiwan, garbage trucks equipped with loudspeakers make their rounds, playing tunes that announce their arrival to the citizens. Designed to reach people's homes at a considerable distance from the stopping points, the two garbage truck tunes thrust themselves onto large swaths of Taiwan's landscape and all of its living inhabitants. According to the author, another species, besides homo sapiens sapiens, has taken notice and musically responded to it. He describes how he witnessed a repetitive sound pattern remarkably similar to a part of a garbage truck melody able to emulate these signals. The melody was collectively executed by a small group of animals he could not see, each producing one not at a time. The author offers a possible candidate, the Brown-Flanked Bush Warbler, and a reconstruction of what he heard. These observations are contextualized within the emerging field of zoomusicology.
typeresearch exposition
date08/07/2016
published11/07/2016
last modified11/07/2016
statuspublished
share statusprivate
licenseAll rights reserved
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/286848/286849
doihttps://doi.org/10.22501/JSS.286848
published inJournal of Sonic Studies
portal issue12. Issue 12


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