VIDEO: CymaScope of Humble Bumble Sucking Thumb

Animal Story, Art & Creativity, Bears, Blog | November 9, 2011

This video of Humble Bumble bear is a first ever in the world, in which the sound of an animal is made visible in real time.  What you are seeing are the energy patterns within sounds.

CymaGlyph - Windwalker's Purr

Earthfire is privileged to be the first wildlife sanctuary in the world to have animal sounds made visible on a new type of scientific instrument, the CymaScope.  Unlike instruments such as sonograms and oscillograms which show sounds graphically, the CymaScope gives us a picture of sound by imprinting the animal sounds on the surface of water.  Rather like a fingerprint on glass, the voice of the animal imprints the surface of water, leaving an embossed impression that can be photographed with special imaging techniques.  The images are not computer-generated but are the actual patterns of energy created by the animals.

So far, the CymaScope has been used to image three of our animal voices: Windwalker, the cougar, Firefly the fox, and Humble Bumble, our special grizzly bear.  We plan on having the sounds of all our animals imaged to build a lexicon of animal CymaGlyphs – the name for a CymaScope image – that will be unique in the world.

CymaGlyph - Firefly's Call

John Stuart Reid of Sonic Age America, the company that developed the CymaScope said, “We are entering a new realm of exploration in which the voice patterns of these wonderful creatures will almost certainly lead to a better understanding of their communications and of the creatures themselves.

Thanks and gratitude to John Stuart Reid for his work and contribution.  For more information, please visit www.cymascope.com.

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