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daily snapple fact #27
A ball of glass will bounce higher then a ball of rubber.

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Song of the Lyrebird

Disclaimer: While I tend not to post here the kind of cool stuff you can find on BoingBoing, Fark and Digg, this thing just blew my mind.

Click Here First.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3433507052114896375

It's the Australian Lyrebird, the same bird you'd see on the back of their 10 cent coin, only I had no idea it was so damn talented! I think this is from a BBC Documentary. Most complex vocal chords of any song-bird out there. Here's a quote from Wikipedia's article on the things:

One researcher, Sydney Curtis, has recorded flute-like lyrebird calls in the vicinity of the New England National Park. Similarly, in 1969, a park ranger, Neville Fenton, recorded a lyrebird song, which resembled flute sounds, in the New England National Park, near Dorrigo in northern coastal New South Wales. After much detective work by Fenton, it was discovered that in the 1930's, a flute player living on a farm adjoining the park used to play tunes near his pet lyrebird. The lyrebird adopted the tunes into his repertoire, and retained them after release into the park. Neville Fenton forwarded a tape of his recording to Norman Robinson. Because a lyrebird is able to carry two tunes at the same time, Robinson filtered out one of the tunes and put it on the phonograph for the purposes of analysis. The song represents a modified version of two popular tunes in the 1930's: "The Keel Row" and "Mosquito's Dance". Musicologist David Rothenberg has endorsed this information.

I mean, the thing not only can reproduce a flute's song, but can reproduce TWO of them at the simultaneously. Like "That's a nice little diddy, but check THIS out! Where's your flute now, biatch?! Come on, all the honies come mate over here."

This video alone puts this bird up to number two in my all-time favorite birds list (An important list to be on, to be sure) just behind the penguin and ONLY because I've had so much face-time with the penguins at SeaWorld what with the annual passes for years and the behind-the-scenes tours and such.

Yep, rad.

posted by Doug 1:17 PM

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