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Sound Clip: The Audible Phylogeny of Lemurs by Chris Mercer
The Audible Phylogeny of Lemurs (in-progress) will be a two-part work presentable as a single continuous piece or as a pair of shorter pieces. It is the product of three years of research on prosimian primates, including work in residence at the Duke University Lemur Center, where I have had the privilege to observe and record semi-free range lemurs and to conduct a set of playback studies. The Duke Lemur Center is the world’s largest lemur reserve outside of Madagascar, housing 250 or so highly charismatic animals, many of them in generous, forested natural habitat enclosures. This work would not be possible without the DLC and its knowledgeable staff and care technicians.
The piece is largely based on a 1994 study by Joseph Macedonia and Katherin Stanger, in which the authors evaluated communication evidence—primarily vocal signal information—to produce a lemur phylogeny (analysis of species relationships). Comparing the Macedonia-Stanger study to a more recent molecular phylogeny (see below), I was struck by how well the earlier communication-based analysis held up—excellent news for an artist interested in animal communication. It suggests that, with proper context, the evolutionary story encoded in the vocalizations of modern animals is audible.
Part I, excerpted here, deals primarily with affiliative calls and a few mild agonistic calls and group alerts—i.e. calls associated with social interaction (as opposed to the alarms, advertisement calls, and more extreme agonism, to be dealt with in Part II). About 12 different species are represented, although Lemur catta (the familiar ring-tailed lemur) and the closely related Hapalemur griseus are the most prominently featured. My goal is to preserve and augment the calls’ natural characteristics and to group and combine them so as to explicate relationships between calls of different species, making the phylogeny audible and the beauty and complexity of the calls accessible. You cannot simply pull up a chair at the Duke Lemur Center and hear these relationships unfold! The piece is assembled from many hours of recordings—a grunt here, a mew or wail there, occasionally a “scene.” The vocalizations are documented for context of emission, cross-referenced with the scientific literature, and meticulously cleaned, enhanced, edited, and spatialized to reveal their acoustic structures and phylogenetic relationships. In several cases, I have used my own observations to augment or extrapolate from the literature, resulting (hopefully) in original insights on the relationships between calls.
I am deeply indebted to biologist Joseph Macedonia for his guidance and input throughout this project; his authoritative work on lemur vocalization is the basis for this piece.
Fascinating sounds, thank you for sharing.
these lemurs are for sampling!
The green,crisp leaves fly through the air.They perform various flips and twirls,like a gymnast.They land perfectly to the floor,since they are as light as a feather.
The sun above blazes furiously,like a fire, and lights the world,as the day starts off.The lemurs’ black and white,zebra striped tail flails and whithers around,like a snake.The branches of the tree sway from under them.Woosh,woosh.
As one lemur travels to a different tree the other follows,like in a Nascar race.”I got you now!”One seems to yell.In their own little language they speak to eachother,but to me it makes me imagine monkeys in the jungle,fighting over the ripest banana.
When the lemurs are finally exhausted,they’re stomachs rattle,like an exhaust system of an old vehicle.They pounce on little mammals and eat the beautiful rosy colored jungle flowers.
Finally,after the sun has set there eyes stay open for just another second,as they are drifting off to sleep.For the last time that day they view the world,their playground,until their eyes disagree and their tiredness finally get the best of them.