Hi, I'm Amy Larson, a fisheries and wildlife major, in the School of Natural Resources.

This past Summer I worked with Dr. Ed Walsh helping him with his research concerning tiger vocalizations. At the start of the Summer Dr. Walsh was in professor mode, teaching me all about how the inner ear works and the facts behind tiger vocalizations. He told me that there is no good way to tell how many tigers there are in the wild. Dr. Walsh is hoping that with the information from the project he put me on during the Summer, researchers will be able to tell if tigers have their own personal vocalizations. If they do, the tigers will be able to be distinguished from each other by their calls. The main sounds that we focused on last Summer were the roar, the growl, and the chuff (or preston).

After the lessons were over, Dr. Walsh put me to work. He had previously recorded 30 second sound bits of tigers making vocalizations. It was my job to go through these sound bits and cut out each individual tiger sound and save it with the tiger's name who made the sound as well as put it with other files of the same sound (whether a roar or growl, etc .). Once all the hundreds upon hundreds of those sounds were organized I then, beginning with growls, started to measure each individual sound. I measure length, point where the call was the loudest, as well as multiple other measurements based on what sound I was measuring.

Although I wasn't able to finish measuring every call Dr. Walsh had saved in his files, and even though we ran out of time before we were able to go to the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo to record my own vocalizations, I know that my efforts this past Summer were a great help to achieve Dr. Walsh's goal. Hopefully one day researchers will be able to tell if tigers make individuals sounds and therefore be able to count their numbers in the wild. I am really happy I got to be a part of this research; it was a great learning experience. Dr. Walsh was a great man to be working with and I would definitely work on a research project like this again.