Gurney Journey

Animals are able to communicate in the realm of sound with much more complexity and nuance than scientists had suspected.

Using new digital tools, researchers have begun to decipher auditory communications from many non-human life forms, such as elephants, birds, bees, bats, and even plants. A few examples:

• Strawberry rootlets will grow toward the sound of running water, even where there is no moisture gradient.

• There are distinctive patterns in elephant vocalizations that correspond whether the elephant is in the presence of a friendly or unfriendly human, an adult human or a child, or a male or female.

• Owl hoots contain markers identifying both the speaker and the listener.

• A researcher using a voice-recognition program for bats vocalizations found that adults lower the pitch of their squeaks when they're communicating with babies, the opposite of us humans. Our baby talk is typically higher in pitch.

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 Albert Collins (1883-1956) was an Australian painter who worked in watercolor.

He was also a radio actor, known for playing the character of "Joe" of the Children's Session in the long-running serial "The Wide-awake Bunyip," which later was called the "Muddle-Headed Wombat."

In Australia an unusual society of octopuses has congregated in Jervis Bay, which observers have dubbed "Octopolis." 

Marine biologist Peter Godfrey-Smith reports that he's noticed a lot of "ornery" behavior that resembles fighting, boxing, bullying, and even shooting shell projectiles underwater. He's not completely sure if this is just territorial squabbling or something else. 

More at Earth Touch Network.

In his book Water-Colour for Beginners Sir Frances Russell Flint warned that a painting will lack color harmony if it has too many colors in it. He said: 

"You must aim at getting tone and harmony in your work, although it may not be easy. All pictures may be divided into masses of bright color or light, medium-strength color, and shadows. It may be difficult to trace the exact places where they occur in a picture, but they are there all the same. It is obvious that when you are working out of doors on a bright sunny day all the colors will be strong and bright in tone, and even the shadows and middle tints will be strong too. The opposite occurs on a dull day, when the whole scene is changed to one of low tone, when both colors and shadows will be soft and subdued. In each case the colors will harmonize and all complement each other in tone. Mix the colors of these two scenes together and the result is a discordant picture which will be unnatural and unbalanced."