full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Stephanie Sardelis: Why do whales sing?
Unscramble the Blue Letters
So how do they do it? Land mammals like us generate sound by mvonig air over our voacl cords when we exhale, ciausng them to vibrate. Baleen wehlas have a U-shaped fold of tissue between their lungs and their large inflatable organs called laryngeal sacs. We don't know this for sure because it's essentially impossible to observe the internal organs of a living, singing wlhae, but we think that when a whale sings, muscular contractions in the throat and chest move air from the lungs across the U-fold and into the laryngeal sacs, causing the U-fold to vibrate. The resulting sound resonates in the sacs like a choir singing in a cathedral making songs loud enough to ppoargtae up to thousands of kilometers away. Whales don't have to ehaxle to sing. Instead, the air is recycled back into the lgnus, creating sound once more.
Open Cloze
So how do they do it? Land mammals like us generate sound by ______ air over our _____ cords when we exhale, _______ them to vibrate. Baleen ______ have a U-shaped fold of tissue between their lungs and their large inflatable organs called laryngeal sacs. We don't know this for sure because it's essentially impossible to observe the internal organs of a living, singing _____, but we think that when a whale sings, muscular contractions in the throat and chest move air from the lungs across the U-fold and into the laryngeal sacs, causing the U-fold to vibrate. The resulting sound resonates in the sacs like a choir singing in a cathedral making songs loud enough to _________ up to thousands of kilometers away. Whales don't have to ______ to sing. Instead, the air is recycled back into the _____, creating sound once more.
Solution
- exhale
- propagate
- vocal
- whales
- lungs
- moving
- causing
- whale
Original Text
So how do they do it? Land mammals like us generate sound by moving air over our vocal cords when we exhale, causing them to vibrate. Baleen whales have a U-shaped fold of tissue between their lungs and their large inflatable organs called laryngeal sacs. We don't know this for sure because it's essentially impossible to observe the internal organs of a living, singing whale, but we think that when a whale sings, muscular contractions in the throat and chest move air from the lungs across the U-fold and into the laryngeal sacs, causing the U-fold to vibrate. The resulting sound resonates in the sacs like a choir singing in a cathedral making songs loud enough to propagate up to thousands of kilometers away. Whales don't have to exhale to sing. Instead, the air is recycled back into the lungs, creating sound once more.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
collocation |
frequency |
whale songs |
3 |
baleen whales |
3 |
humpback whales |
2 |
breeding grounds |
2 |
human activity |
2 |
Important Words
- air
- baleen
- called
- cathedral
- causing
- chest
- choir
- contractions
- cords
- creating
- essentially
- exhale
- fold
- generate
- impossible
- inflatable
- internal
- kilometers
- land
- large
- laryngeal
- living
- loud
- lungs
- making
- mammals
- move
- moving
- muscular
- observe
- organs
- propagate
- recycled
- resonates
- resulting
- sacs
- sing
- singing
- sings
- songs
- sound
- thousands
- throat
- tissue
- vibrate
- vocal
- whale
- whales