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Tiny, Tiny Tummy Rumblings

By Peter Lloyd

Ever wonder what it sounds like inside the gut of a bug? Neither have I. But a team of scientists not only wondered, they did what scientists do and figured out a way to listen. They used a technique devised by nanotechnologists called atomic force microscopy. And with tiny microphones in hand they strapped down a bunch of mosquitoes, flies, and ladybugs to found out what it sounds like inside the little critters.

Actually, "what it sounds like" is a bit of a misnomer. Let's review our basic semantics.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, audio vibrations do emanate from the site of the crash. But since nobody's ears sense the vibrations, nobody hears them. When nobody experiences sound, some argue, there's no sound. At least in the sense of what you or I experience with our ears.

What about the squirrels, birds, deer, and all the other other animals in the forest? Don't they hear the sound?

Who knows? The philosophers who started all this tended to be rather anthropocentric.

Besides, that's not the point. The sounds you're about to hear, aren't the kind of thing we hear every day. We might want to think of the "sound" from inside a ladybug, for example, as an artifact. All the same, what you will hear, if you listen, are very faint oscillations—no bigger in amplitude than an atom—converted to sound waves.

Listen. Try the third one in the list.

Isn't it amazing how much the inside of bug gut sounds like the outer-space sound effects of a 1950s alien-invasion thriller? Or someone tuning a shortwave radio?

So what's the point? What does hearing the atomic tummy rumblings of a mosquito have to do with anything?

By listening to bug guts, scientists will learn more about the insides of insects. And what they learn promises all kinds of benefits. When we look inside a bug or anything else, we see and learn. But by listening, scientists can construct pictures of what's going on that might reveal more than what their eyes alone could discern.

Using a sense other than the obvious or expected one can reveal surprising insights. In a very simple experiment I do with groups, I ask people to read a phrase aloud. The phrase is written is such a way that the readers have no idea what they're saying and yet their listeners understand them quite clearly.

Likewise, seeing sounds, smelling images, and listening to pictures, can open your doors of perception to perspectives that provide fresh, problem-solving inspiration.

The team doing the insect listening thinks their work may help us find ways to limit the damage done to people and crops by mosquitoes and other pests. But who knows. Their work could lead to medicines that improve and even save lives, nanotechnology that makes electronics and computing tools even smaller, or even better sci-fi soundtracks.

If you're really interested, you can learn more from Applied Physics Letters.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.
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