Listening to Whales

On CBC today there was a piece about how whales communicate. It proposed, among other things, that each species learns within the parameters of its own language and may, in fact, become unable to hear a sound that falls outside the learned boundaries of its auditory world, despite a physical ability to register that pitch and tempo. Spending time with Jaya, as he makes new sounds every day, and begins to listen with ever increasing awareness to the sounds I make, I find this idea particularly arresting.

If it's true that we are only able to hear that which we have learned to hear, then our childhood is actually spent learning not to listen. In many ways, it makes sense that this would be so. I suspect our brains, though ridiculous large and underutilized, would be overwhelmed by the demands of processing every sound that exists. Evolutionarily speaking, it's likely those who "overhear" are more likely to be fatally distracted or incapacitated by auditory overload. Maybe this is what "crazy" is all about. There's a Raymond Bradbury story about this...but I digress...

Still, I like the idea that a child might have, and keep, different ways of listening than the ones us adults are accustomed to. Might, for example, be able to hear the communication of whales, not as blunt bellows or barks, and not in a Dr. Doolittle-esque translation, but with the subtlety of any language fully known by its speakers.

I, of course, am not the one to teach this thing I cannot know, but perhaps there are ways I can avoid teaching Jaya how not to hear. I will have to think on this...