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The Earth Was Silent For 4 Billion Years
Animals made no noise for 90% of the planet’s life. Now industrial noise threatens the “biophony”
We often think of the natural world as noisy — beautifully so.
When I used to camp in Ontario as a Boy Scout, the night was alive with crickets, and when we were up further north, the occasional howl of a wolf or scream of a fox. When I talk to scientists who’ve worked in rainforests, they’ll talk of the cry of birds, each to each, the chatter of monkeys, and the thrum of insects in the moist air.
Forests, in other words, are filled with the sound of communication. Oceans, too. Animals talk to each other a lot. Maybe they’re warning each other of danger, or defending their territory, or trying to impress a mate. Either way, part of what’s so magical about nature is the noise of nature’s conversations.
I was thus surprised to learn that this chatter is, in the history of our planet, a quite recent evolution.
In his recent book Sounds Wild and Broken, David George Haskell — a professor of biology and environmental studies — estimates that for billions of years, perhaps 90% of Earth’s existence, there was no audible communication by animals.
