Welcome to Why Mice Sing. A morass of science, the grotesquery, art, and other randomness that generally results when you give a pen to a pillock.
Past and Present Projects:
Collapse IV features a series of investigations by philosophers, writers and artists into Concept Horror. Contributors address the existential, aesthetic, theological and political dimensions of horror, interrogate its peculiar affinity with philosophical thought, and uncover the horrors that may lie in wait for those who pursue rational thought beyond the bounds of the reasonable. (Urbanomic, 2008)I have desperately tried to avoid anything that resembles philosophy as an ex-fling used it as a weapon to bludgeon me with (but only figuratively). Maybe five years is too long to avoid something out of spite (well that, and a fear of big, obtuse sentences). I am certainly waiting for my copy with a mixture of trepidation and excitement.
MiceSong
"Mouse songs are sung at ultrasonic frequencies, which is why no one has noticed their complexity before, nor indeed been moved to celebrate the tunes in romantic poetry" (Hooper, 2005)
A paper in PLoS Biology by (Holy & Guo, 2005) demonstrated that male mice vocalise within a range of over 30 to 110 kHz (ultrasonic) in the presence of females, or female urine. The vocalisations have the characteristics of song with "several different syllable types, whose temporal sequencing includes the utterance of repeated phrases" the complexity of which, approaches "that of many songbirds".
Holy TE, Guo Z (2005), Ultrasonic Songs of Male Mice. PLoS Biol 3(12): e386
Hooper, R. (2005), Romantic rodents give secret serenades, New Scientist News Service, (Acc: 21/04/06)
