The Voice of the Dugong

Listen to the following sequence of dugong squeaks and barks. It is in the common MP3 format.



to save with right mouse button,
and for playback in Non-Microsoft-Browsers:
Dugong's Voice


Dugongs make chirp and bark like sounds, in mother-calf communication and during mating. It is believed that infrasound, which is sound below the human hearing limits, is also used.



This is a spectrogram, the graphic representation of a high pitch squeak.
It shows four (two more unclear) harmonic bands below 10 kHz.


spectogram

This is a hoarse, bark like call, there are no harmonic bands, frequency below 4 kHz.



(Sound of the Toba Aquarium male grabbed from TV, hence some background noise. Spectrograms made with Avisoft-SASLab Light)

spektrogram
Compare this with the voice of a Manatee. Not unexpectedly it is composed similarly to that of the Dugong, however, it has a greater frequency range, 20 kHz and more.
(the green bottom is caused by background noise)

On the following pages you find details and more spectrograms of manatees voices:
http://www.marine.usf.edu/bio/fishlab/manatees.htm
and
http://www.marine-mammal-cognition.de/experiments/manatonen.htm







    » back to Dugong Page
 November 2003