(image courtesy of batsound.com)
14 February 2014
Today I walked around the lab with a bat detector. I got it from the guy who sometimes borrows our manatee brain.
Um, what?
My day job is oftentimes so absurd that my work dreams are more realistic.
So you dreamed there were bats hiding in the lab?
It was the lights, actually, and I didn't dream it. Motion detector lights. The kind that turn on when you enter a room. All of the motion detectors in the new building use infrared sensors. Some also use ultrasound. The detectors are almost everywhere, except the animal holding rooms because those are on a strict light cycle.
OK. That's kinda creepy-cool. So why were you--?
Because rodents can hear in the ultrasound range. They communicate in ultrasound.
Wow, OK, so...
Imagine hearing a dial tone in your head all day.
That would suck. That would drive me crazy.
I have tinnitus. It does suck. It has, at times, driven me crazy. Anyway, we study mouse behavior, and we don't want the little guys to be stressed out. They might well be hearing the equivalent of loud restaurant chatter whenever they leave their holding room.
Why the bat detector?
Bats communicate with ultrasound, which we can't hear. So the detector converts that to tinnitus -- I mean an audible squeal -- er, tone. So today I went around listening to the lab shrieking.
What are you guys going to do?
In our lab, the building manager cut the wires in two of our rooms. No lights, but no more noise. Later we learned that another lab found the off switch on the sensors.
Oops.
Yeah, well, it ain't our money gonna fix it. Plus now I know how to use a bat detector.
What about the manatee brain?
Oh, that's still in the cold room in the old building. We'll move it over one of these days.
*****
A propos of nothing, the full moon is bright on the snow tonight.
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