Beam Reach

well its been awhile

Summer is almost over, but im finally getting around to editing that final paper a bit more, figure i’d get some these things done before I go start my crazy senior year. Editing also led me to reminiscing about beam reach, and looking at the videos.

 And funny too how I still ended up doing a lit bit of sound work this summer at the zoo- been helping develop a behavioral monitoring program at Brookfield Zoo, and with that you need to collect data on different variables that might effect that behavioral, so hence we’ve been measuring sound levels around the park. Not recording actually, they are called docimeters, and they measure the average dB level each minute, as well as measure the peak sound level of each minute. The devices we use are acutally designed for workers at their jobs the meaure the amount of sound exposure in their work place- here we are using them by hanging them up in trees in fake bird houses, and the most fun one is up in the ceiling of the monkey house- the first time we put it up there the baboons were screaming like crazy before the visitors came in, and as it eerily echoed up to us as we looked down from the opening above them, I have a vision of Dante’s inferno…

 Anyways, the even more fun(!) part is that we get to analyze the data and work on making a database (i.e. me stumbling through access)- and what little we have looked at so far we haven’t found too much of any effect on behavior- but then again the averages we get aren’t changing much- but more analyzing to come for the final presentation in a few weeks, so maybe we’ll get some different results. But then again, no effect isnt a bad thing at all- im pretty sure most zoo animals get used to all the noise, especially with the constant construction here.

 So no hydrophones, but hey at least some acoustics 🙂 i got to ask smart questions like if they are calibrated or if they can measure frequency.

Other than that, been working on my own project investigating how the placement of an observer effects an animal’s behavior, but I also found out that zoo keepers bring special guests to feed the animals im looking at, so that kinda skewed my results a bit – but nevertheless I’m still going on with it, and at the same time I’m now trying to help out the female Grevy Zebra get pregnant- I hope I can get that one to work out.

 Well thats all for now, i suppose this is a bit random, but I thought beam reachers would be happy to learn about some zoo acoustics