Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Our voice is essential to human communication, identity and artistic expression and laid the foundation for our unique cultural evolution. But voiced sound production is also the primary form of communication for all mammals, amphibians and birds. Producing voice involves highly complicated, precisely coordinated body movements, which are crucial for success in the competition for resources and for finding mates. However, for many animals, we still don't know how they produce and control their voice.
Over the past ten years, my lab has studied how sounds are produced across different vocal vertebrates. In addition to discovering remarkable adaptations in rodents and aquatic frogs, we have shown that the same physical principals underlie voice production in birds and mammals.
Particularly one group of mammals, the whales, evolved amazing ways to produce sound, which they have to do underwater - while holding their breath. The toothed whales, like dolphins and sperm whales, use their voice to track and hunt prey deep under the ocean’s surface. The immense baleen whales produce very low frequency sounds to communicate over vast distances to attract mates, some with spectacularly beautiful songs. We show these animals can communicate and adapt in an underwater world increasingly filled with human noise.
Speaker Profile: Professor Coen Elemans is director of the Sound, Communication, and Behavior Group at the University of Southern Denmark. He has developed several experimental setups and sensor technologies to study voice production and muscle physiology, which has led to publications in the highest-ranking interdisciplinary journals (e.g., Nature, Science, PNAS). Coen has received several awards, such as the Bolk Prize, MBL Grass Fellow, Fyens Stiftstidendes Science Award, and BioMed Central Research Award.
Introduction and Chair: Prof. Yoko Yazaki-Sugiyama (OIST)
Our voice is essential to human communication, identity and artistic expression and laid the foundation for our unique cultural evolution. But voiced sound production is also the primary form of communication for all mammals, amphibians and birds. Producing voice involves highly complicated, precisely coordinated body movements, which are crucial for success in the competition for resources and for finding mates. However, for many animals, we still don't know how they produce and control their voice.
Over the past ten years, my lab has studied how sounds are produced across different vocal vertebrates. In addition to discovering remarkable adaptations in rodents and aquatic frogs, we have shown that the same physical principals underlie voice production in birds and mammals.
Particularly one group of mammals, the whales, evolved amazing ways to produce sound, which they have to do underwater - while holding their breath. The toothed whales, like dolphins and sperm whales, use their voice to track and hunt prey deep under the ocean’s surface. The immense baleen whales produce very low frequency sounds to communicate over vast distances to attract mates, some with spectacularly beautiful songs. We show these animals can communicate and adapt in an underwater world increasingly filled with human noise.
Speaker Profile: Professor Coen Elemans is director of the Sound, Communication, and Behavior Group at the University of Southern Denmark. He has developed several experimental setups and sensor technologies to study voice production and muscle physiology, which has led to publications in the highest-ranking interdisciplinary journals (e.g., Nature, Science, PNAS). Coen has received several awards, such as the Bolk Prize, MBL Grass Fellow, Fyens Stiftstidendes Science Award, and BioMed Central Research Award.
Introduction and Chair: Prof. Yoko Yazaki-Sugiyama (OIST)
