While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain…
BIRD song was the inspiration for Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale – one can hardly imagine being similarly moved by a mouse’s squeak. Yet it seems that mice can sing, and that their songs to prospective mates are nearly as complex as those of birds. Their vocalisations are made at ultrasonic frequencies, which is why no one noticed them before, nor was ever moved to celebrate them in Romantic poetry.
Tim Holy and Zhongsheng Guo of Washington University School…
