Some creatures are so quiet, they appear to make no sound at all.

"There are at least 200,000 species out there singing in ways that are silent to us, and that's way more songs than if you add up all of the birds and the fish and the whales and the frogs out there," says Rex Cocroft, a biologist at the University of Missouri who is fascinated by creatures that only use vibrations to communicate.  

Cocroft recently managed to record the sound of a treehopper. The treehopper shakes their abdomen 100 times a second to produce a low sound that vibrates through the stem of the plant they are standing on. While that sound is audible to other treehoppers, it’s outside the frequency that humans can hear. Cocroft had to use a specialized piece of equipment, a vibrometer, which uses a laser to detect minute vibrations on the surface of an object. Using this, he was able to record the sound and allow us to hear treehoppers in conversation. 

The Weatherman’s Hymn—There Shall Be Showers of Blessings

The Contractor’s Hymn—The Church’s One Foundation

The Tailor’s Hymn—Holy, Holy, Holy

The Politician’s Hymn—Standing on the Promises

The Optometrist’s Hymn—Open My Eyes That I May See

The IRS Agent’s Hymn—I Surrender All

The Electrician’s Hymn—I Saw the Light

The Shopper’s Hymn—Sweet Bye and Bye

The Realtor’s Hymn—I’ve Got a Mansion, Just Over the Hilltop

The Doctor’s Hymn—The Great Physician

Network World reports:

We’re obsessed with our phones, a new study has found. The heaviest smartphone users click, tap or swipe on their phone 5,427 times a day, according to researcher Dscout.

That’s the top 10 percent of phone users, so one would expect it to be excessive. However, the rest of us still touch the addictive things 2,617 times a day on average. No small number.

The research firm, which specializes in consumer reactions to products, recruited 94 Android device users and installed special software on their smartphones. The tool tracked each user’s “interaction” over five days, all day, the company says in a blog post on its website.

“And by every interaction, we mean every tap, type, swipe and click. We’re calling them touches,” it explains.

Averaging out the numbers, the aforementioned figures mean the heaviest users are touching their devices a couple of million times in one year, Dscout says.

... Probably the most interesting thing in all this was that the people surveyed completely underestimated their phone touching. While they were initially shocked by the numbers, 41 percent said “it probably won’t change the way I use my phone.”