Awhile ago I did a post about ant stridulation or ants communicating via sound. I recently found a couple more recordings of ants.
The first is a short piece on recording ants for KUER radio in Utah. Dr. Bernie Krause, a bioacoustician, talks about his experience recording in Cherry Creek, AZ in Western Soundscapes: Ants with ant sounds in the background. Unfortunately, he does not identify the ants.
Entomologist Hayward Spangler talks about a novel way of using his teeth as a way to pick up harvest ant stridulations. You can listen and download a mp3 file at NPR: Listening to Ants or listen here to same recording. (In case one of the links breaks in the future.)
You can also hear a recording of the harvester ant stridulations by Jeff Rice at Western Soundscape Archive
I just can’t get enough of listening to ants. How about you?
i know this sounds crazy but, I think I can hear ants at night in my house. There has been this sound at night that drives me nuts and no matter what I did I couldn’t get the sound to stop. I’ve noticed that this noise doesn’t happen at other locations as well as certain seasons of the year. I have VERY good hearing in one ear and am almost deaf in the other. Is this even possible? Can a human have such sensitive hearing?
Wendy,
I’m not sure whether you are hearing ants, but I know some people can hear very different frequencies than others. Our environment is full of noise pollution, from lights humming to security systems.
lying on my lawn on a towel in the sun in Shropshire england and I kept hears what sounded like birds chirping far off. Took a while but I finally realised I was lying on ants and had trapped them. Got a couple of nips for my insolence too! had no idea they are so noisy