How the cochlea computes (2024)

The thesis about human speech occupying less crowded spectrum is well aligned with a book called "The Great Animal Orchestra" (https://www.amazon.com/Great-Animal-Orchestra-Finding-Origin...).

That author details how the "dawn chorus" is composed of a vast number of species making noise, but who are able to pick out mating calls and other signals due to evolving their vocalizations into unique sonic niches.

It's quite interesting but also a bit depressing as he documents the decline in intensity of this phenomenon with habitat destruction etc.

Probably worth mentioning that as evolutions that allow them to compete well in nature die out, ones that allow them to compete well in cities takes their place. Evolution is always a series of tradeoffs.

Maybe we don't have sonic variation, but temporal instead.

The dying out of birds "in nature" and the adaptations to cities are largely independent as they occur in different populations.

It's about filling open niches. City birds were an open niche for a long time. The ones who adapted to handle that better are thriving in better population numbers than those which can only survive with 13 specific types of trees.

Even still, among the populations of birds not adapting to the city, they are being forcibly adapted in other ways. If the reach is too big, they die.

This is how evolution works, and has always worked. The world shifts, and those who can handle it thrive, while those who can't, suffer. It's the reason mammals are running the planet today when it was lizards just a couple million years ago.

The problem is that evolution works on a much longer timescale than the pace of change to the environment that humans cause.