Katy Payne

Katy Payne 2009

Katharine "Katy" Boynton Payne (* 1937 as Katharine Boynton in Ithaca , New York ) is an American behavioral scientist and bioacoustician who decodes the "language" of elephants . With her Elephant Listening Project , she gained the first important insights that still help to protect elephants today.

Life and accomplishments

Katy Payne studied music and biology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. With a team of scientists and her husband Roger Payne , she researched the song of humpback whales in the 1960s . She observed that humpback whales “sing” fixed stanzas, repeat them and develop them further.

She was the first to discover that whales communicate in the infrasound range , among other things . In 1984 she discovered that elephants also use this area of sound. Subsequent studies showed that elephants also use these low frequencies for their coordination over long distances. In 1990 she received the Guggenheim scholarship . In 1999 she founded the Elephant Listening Project and was its director until 2006.

Fonts

Silent thunder. In the presence of elephants. Simon & Schuster, New York 1998, ISBN 0-684-80108-6 .
German: Silent Donner. The secret language of the elephants. Translated from the English by Ilse Rothfuss. Frederking and Thaler, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-89405-127-2 .

Web links

Commons : Katy Payne - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Literature by and about Katy Payne in the catalog of the German National Library
Elephant Listening Project website

Jane E. Brody: Scientist at Work: Katy Payne; Picking Up Mammals' Deep Notes. In: The New York Times . November 9, 1993.

Radiokolg - women who saw the world anew on oe1.orf.at

Individual evidence

↑ Elizabeth H. Oakes: Encyclopedia of World Scientists. Infobase, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-8160-6158-7 , p. 573 ( Google books) .

personal data
SURNAME	Payne, Katy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Boynton Payne, Katharine (full name); Boynton, Katharine (maiden name); Boynton Payne, Katy; Boynton, Katy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American behavioral scientist and bioacoustic specialist
DATE OF BIRTH	1937
PLACE OF BIRTH	Ithaca , New York

[1] Elizabeth H. Oakes: Encyclopedia of World Scientists. Infobase, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-8160-6158-7 , p. 573 ( Google books) .