Hello everyone, Last year I went to Sulawesi in Indonesia and went to Tangkoko national park to see the Tarsier monkeys that are nocturnal. On the way to see them at dusk these cicadas started singing. To say the sound was intense is a huge understatement, these cicadas sounded like a siren and a very spooky siren at that, even the way the pitch would drop and then rise to a long sustained note was jaw dropping, i think every hair on me was standing on end hearing it they sounded that eerie. I was too busy freaking out to it and watching where I was going through the forest to think of getting a recording of it. Luckily my friend was a lot more switched on and got a 30 second recording on his SLR. The sound in the recording is surprising loud, the cicadas come through loud and clear.
My question is can I upload the video of these cicadas on Elektronauts? everyone should hear them!!
Why not just upload to Youtube and embed the video in your post? Then the majority of the world will be able to hear it 
I was lucky to listen to them in Bali, it sounded like a bank alarm . Then I realised it was the cicadas, they even made some chorus/phaser/flanger fx when going out of sync.
As mentioned it is best to host on YouTube and link here
I love natural sounds from multitudes of insects, wind in leaves, waves on the sea etc. All simple individual elements but from the multitude emerges gorgeous complexity. Served as inspiration for many of my art works.
Steven Strogatz has a great book where he talks about the sync behavior of fireflies and other phenomena: https://www.stevenstrogatz.com/books/sync-the-emerging-science-of-spontaneous-order
Indonesia is full of wild sounds, did you hear any Tokay Geckos over there?
Did you by any chance get a recording of the ones in Bali?, I think I heard the ones you heard in Ubud when I was there, be cool to compare the different sounds!
Did not have anything with I could use to record the sound…there must be recordings in youtube and similar
I know what you mean, living in a city you can still hear all of those things but it has to compete with the sounds of traffic and construction but you can still get the quiet times to enjoy natural sounds. We don’t get Cicadas down hear in Melbourne but the natural bird life is pretty diverse. Was speaking to a Dutchman in Sulawesi who was telling me there are virtually no birds and insects in Holland anymore, I couldn’t imagine waking up and not hearing birds.
Cheers for the link to Steven Strogatz, that isdefinately going to be an interesting read!
Cheers
Heard plenty of Geckos but not sure if I heard the Tokay or not, not sure what sound they make to tell it apart from other Geckos.
That s a little overexaggerated (i live in a major city and see several species of birds in the backyard) but it s definitely heavily declining thanks to massive mono-aggriculture, pesticides, fertilizers, industry etc. And this goes for most of Europe. A bit morbid example but I remember childhood summer car vacations where the grill and wind screen of the car would be splattered with insects. This hardly happens anymore. Where did those bugs go? Don t think they learned to dodge cars.
Hate to sound ignorant but thought European countries countries like Germany for example had better sustainability policies in place than Australia.
I found this site, must be more like that
Hi everyone I have uploaded the video to youtube I hope this Cicada freaks you all out the same way it did with me!!
Cool, cheers for the link
I kind of agree with him, I live in a small city east of Spain. When I was a kid there was so many dragonflies we would go “hunting” them…you could see lots of bats feeding on mosquitos. 35 years later is difgicult to see a dragonflies or bats anymore in the city. Everyyear the throw pesticides to kill mosquitos, is natural predators are gone (poison gets stored in fat and when bats hivernate and use that fat it kill them) and pesticides do kill many things more than just mosquitos and, which have become a major problem by the way.
Is there any change in practice and policy on the horizon at least, any moves away from pesticides or is it pretty much “steady as she goes”?
Re: Germany vs Australia. Sure it can be relatively better regulated over here but that doesn t necessarily mean nature is saved now. Do take into account that the density of population, habitation, industry , traffic etc is way way higher here. EU is relatively heavy on regulation compared to the rest of the world but it still is highly dominated by economic/industry powers. Much more is still necessary.
Insect populations are crashing worldwide. Reasons include but are not limited to: climate change, industrial agriculture and pollution. Some areas are worse than others, but it is impacting the entire food web.
No, that’s actually a good question. First of all, Europe has experienced high levels of environmental degradation for a significantly longer time period than Australia has. Secondly, although sustainable policies are certainly nothing to be sneezed at a lot of them aren’t really aimed at rebuilding biodiversity back to “natural” levels; you’d need to be putting a lot of resources into “rewilding” for that to occur. What they tend to do is to try and keep things from getting worse.
There are more and more moves towards an ecologic future but the big question is whether they re fast and big enough. Well they are not because biodiversity has been shrinkig for decades. The question is if and where it will stabilize. Irreversible damage is already done.
(Posted in parallel with @rex_mundii)