Thanks for the info on neural-net computers, Teresa. Neural nets are
important to the exploration of artificial intelligence, and song
recognition that would go beyond our abilities of is the sort of thing that
hovers around this area.

When I travel, I'm always struck by the fact that some species in distant
lands sound amazingly like familiar species at home. In other words, there
are only so many permutations of bird song, especially the simple ones (a
single whistle or short trill, for example), and they are repeated (more or
less) in different parts of the world. Our worldwide "all the sounds of
nature" CD-ROM would of course take this into account.

And, I guess to take this further, for research purposes computers could
recognize the songs of *individual* animals and monitor their presence and
activity. "Fred the Bat flew over Rocky Creek for 22 minutes between 22:00
and 01:00 hours last night."

Which will come first in our Brave New World, individual recognition by
sound or by DNA markers in feces? Believe it or not, there's already a lot
of progress in the latter area; poopology may be the emerging science.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416