

Wolves’ howls have distinct identities, voice recognition study shows - bitops
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/07/wolves-howls-have-distinct-identities-voice-recognition-study-shows/

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DamnYuppie
How is this even surprising to anyone? Unless they are clones then every
creature is slightly different and you would expect their vocalization to be
unique as well, for example how often do you meet people who have the exact
same voice? Only issue is our hearing probably isn't sharp enough, or
optimized to the same frequencies/ranges, to pick up the differences in the
sounds generated by most animals.

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205guy
Nobody said it was surprising, you're just mistaken in the tone of the write-
up. The job of the science writer is to take some science news, explain it,
add some context and quotes around it and make it exciting enough to click on
and read. To have an excited or entheusiastic tone for a subject, as these
wolf researcher understandably do, is not the same as wanting you to be
surprised by it.

Also, the advancement of science being reported is not that wolf howls are
thought to be distinct, it's that somebody wrote the code that finally proves
that they are. Granted, you might've thought that it was trivial code and it
had already been done, but the fact is it hadn't been done until now, probably
more because of funding issues than tech issues.

Hopefully, this tech (materials and code) will become more commonplace among
zoologists, so that the cost of animal vocalization analysis comes down and
gets funded quickly across all species. It seems like a promising new tool in
the field.

And am I the only one that is thinking of the animated movie "Alpha and Omega"
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_and_Omega_%28film%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_and_Omega_%28film%29))?
One key part of the movie is that some wolves howl better than others, but
they can also learn to improve.

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DamnYuppie
I did not mistake the tone of the write up. I was simply trying to vent my
frustration at this type of research.

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christopheraden
It's not surprising, but still fascinating. This property isn't limited to
humans and wolves and dolphins, either. Scientists at Cornell showed that
parrotlets have unique "names" given by their parents.
[http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2011/07/parrots-learn-
their-...](http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2011/07/parrots-learn-their-names-
their-parents)

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cpearce
This is not surprising at all. But I'm a dog person. I can identify most of
the dogs that live on my street by their barks/howls.

