This also happens to be the same frequency as the low part of the bird’s mating song. In 2010, researchers monitored the egg-laying of the great tit bird along a busy Dutch street, and found that females laid on average 10 percent fewer eggs when the ambient traffic noise was in the 2 kHz band. Natalie PestanaĪ few studies are bearing this out. Kermit’s Crush: Researcher Kirsten Parris listening to urban frogs in Melbourne, Australia. “They can no longer hear that Bob has more energy than Frank.” Pairing up with a less energetic mate could reduce her breeding success, she says. “Females could be making poor choices,” says Kirsten Parris, a researcher at the University of Melbourne who studies the effects of urban noise on amphibians. When animals are forced to raise the pitch of their mating calls, important information may be be lost and females have less knowledge at their disposal to pick the fittest mate. This has led some researchers to consider whether human-generated noise is getting in the way of animals’ love lives. Studies link low-pitched mating calls of male birds, primates, frogs, and other animals to larger body size, higher testosterone levels, and sexual maturity. While not widely studied, there is evidence that lower frequency mating calls advertise a male’s physical and sexual fitness. The blacktail shiner fish attracts his mate with a deep growl. Female red deer, for example, prefer male red deer with deep roars, and the usually quiet and shy male koala bear performs a mating call like a deep belch. Like us, many species of animals also find lower male mating calls the most attractive. For example, certain species of frogs increased the pitch of their mating calls by 5 percent and grasshoppers increased the pitch of their calls by about 4 percent. Studies have found that these species and many others are raising the pitch of their mating calls to adapt to urban noise. Coincidentally, that’s the exact range of pitch for some of the deepest and most attractive mating calls in many species of animals, including bow-winged grasshoppers, the southern brown tree frog, the American robin, and the Carolina wren. It falls between 1 kHz and 10 kHz (with the lowest noise falling at the lower end of the spectrum). One hertz is 1 oscillation per second, and 1 kilohertz (kHz) is 1,000 oscillations per second. Pitch is measured in hertz, which is the number of times per second that a soundwave oscillates. A number of studies over the past decade indicate that the males of some species have been forced to forgo their sexy deep voices-sometimes by as much as 300 hertz, because they can’t be heard above the ever-growing din of our factories, freeways, and machines. But the Cumberbatches of the animal kingdom aren’t as lucky. Fortunately, Cumberbatch doesn’t need to artificially raise the pitch of his voice. And if we think of the human voice as a mating call, Cumberbatch’s lushly low voice is the paragon.īut imagine how much of his appeal would be lost if he raised the pitch of his voice by 300 hertz.Īt this higher register, Cumberbatch sounds more like Elijah Wood of The Hobbit, whose voice has been compared to a flute. A 2007 study of modern hunter-gatherers in Tanzania (who don’t have access to modern birth control) found that men with low-pitched voices had more children born to them. A sonorous voice may also indicate good reproductive health. Studies show that women tend to be attracted to men with deep voices because it signals a large physical frame and social dominance. You’re welcome.”įrom the perspective of physical anthropology, the commotion over Cumberbatch’s voice is not surprising. There is even a Facebook page devoted to his mellifluous timbre where fans join together “because we love his voice.” And if the sex appeal of his register wasn’t clear enough already, consider the popular meme that depicts a reclining Cumberbatch with the words, “Yes, my voice gets women pregnant. It resonates rich and deep, “like a jaguar in a cello,” wrote journalist Caitlin Moran. Some people are confounded by actor Benedict Cumberbatch’s heartthrob status and compare his looks to an otter, bread dough, or an alien from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
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