Mosquito Audio Recordings
Neal Stephenson says:
A week ago Dave Nash, Barcin Acar, and I made a safari down to the soundproof booth in the warehouse and obtained some relatively high-quality recordings of male and female mosquitoes. Attached is a pair of MP3s for your listening pleasure. Also, I used Audacity to perform a simple frequency analysis of each clip. Plots are appended. The male has very sharp clear harmonics out to at least 17 x the fundamental tone. The female’s fundamental tone is less sharply defined (I think it was flying around more vigorously) and so the harmonics don’t show up as distinctly.
This is just a first attempt, and more in the nature of a practice & reconaissance run than anything, but I thought you all might find it interesting.
I have also appended a much more disturbing audio clip of a whole box full of mixed male & female mosquitoes.
This is interesting indeed. Is the fact that they emitted specific frequencies significant? Does it mean they can differentiate between some frequencies, least in the most primal of terms, male or female (of my species)? Perhaps there is a help me frequency, accounting for the fact that after I kill one in my house another springs up out of nowhere with a vengeance.
Just wondering what happens to a person who walks through the “field” with a female mosquito on their face?