baaahhhddd
 

What, so those frat pledges can figure out if someone's actually getting something out of all those farm field trips?



Is Your Sheep Stressed? Just Ask It


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Stressed-out sheep bleat out their anguish, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

They found that, like humans, sheep communicate stress by changing the timbre of their voices.

Mark Feinstein of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, said his findings could help farmers and, of course, the sheep they herd.

An expert in bioacoustics, Feinstein did his work at Teagasc, an Irish government agricultural research organization.

He isolated sheep and separated lambs from their mothers as part of his experiments -- then recorded their bleats.

His recordings suggest that sheep express stress by altering the timbre of their vocalizations, or the overall quality of sounds, rather than by changing pitch or loudness.

Stress can be measured by taking an animal's blood, but it would be much easier, cheaper and, yes, less stressful to simply listen, Feinstein said.

Brilliant. Our tax dollars at work and he got a trip to Ireland out of it ...

They had to do research to figure out that animals make more strident noises when distressed?

Someone needs to do research on why the guy who got the grant to do this study is so much smarter than the rest of us.

I want a grant to try and discover why water is wet.

Now wait a minute guys. Nothing in the post indicated tax money or a grant. This could be an important step in animal husbandry. A non-invasive technique for monitoring the stress level of the flock would certainly be a help to the flockers. When only the timbre and not the volume or pitch change, it's hard to detect the symptom when you don't know there's a problem. Besides he had to do his work in Ireland, isn't that punishment enough?:alien:

Research does not occur in the absence of grants these days.

Tinkering still goes on, but that generally involves basements, no budget, and use of various castoffs.

OK, but it may have come from the IRA or some sheep loving New Zealanders.:)

Despite limited information in the article, it does identify the researcher in bioacoustics, and attaches him to an American institution of (more or less) learning. A topic so lame as this would have to be funded by the government (remember the flow rate of ketchup studies?)

Q.E.D. Government Grants

Hoo hoo ... better still: he did the work during his sabbatical year. So he was getting paid to not work in a foreign country.

(from a notice describing a lecture he gave on his return:
Sheep, Stress and Satellites

How I spent my sabbatical year in the west of Ireland as a visiting
scientist with Teagasc, the Irish agricultural research and education
agency. First, I'll talk about my work on sheep vocalization,
looking for acoustic correlates of behavioral and physiological
stress. Next I'll report on a study of sheep grazing behavior and
its impact on the (achingly beautiful) environment of the Connemara
mountains, using data from animals collared with GPS tracking devices
-- and from many, many long hours of observation while hiking on
mist-covered hills and treacherous quaking bogs.

The Hampshire College press release elaborates a bit further but doesn't provide much in the way of additional detail on his funding source.

OK, but he was doing something useful unlike some grants. :)

I need a grant! I think my goats are stressing! Where do I sign up?

I just wanted to hear that again.

For those who think there's no practical use...
 

...for this sort of thing, please consider the Bow-Lingual.

http://www.takara-usa.com/bowlingual.html

I can't help but laugh.