We all have them. We all use them. In fact, most of us can’t go anywhere without them. Yes, our cell phones. We are used to hearing all the normal, everyday ringtones, or songs, as the case may be. But imagine your reaction if you were to instead hear a click-click sound made by a rare Central American poison arrow dart frog, or the howl of a Mexican gray wolf, or the bellow of a beluga whale.
An environmental group in the United States wonders if people hear these strange sounds on their cell phones, they will wonder about them and what is going on with the animals that make them. They want to educate and inspire people. They want to use cell phones to bring these rare sounds from these rare animals to people’s 
attention. It has reached some people, because 24,000 people have downloaded these ringtones.
“With the ringtones, this is the tip of the iceberg,” said Peter Leyden, director of the institute, which studies the impact of cell phones.
Picture Credit:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Black-RAZRV3-closed.jpg/426px-Black-RAZRV3-closed.jpg
Co-founder of the Center for Biological Diversity Peter Galvin invented this new technological method of informing the younger generation about these animal species. He spent days at a time in jungles recording the odd sounds of these animals. He figured using cell phone ringtones would be an interesting, cool way to go about doing this.
The ringtones also include the sounds of multiple species of frogs, as well as birds from South America and owls from North America. While this idea of “ringtones from the wild” might be entertaining, it was created with serious intentions. The aim is to get people interested in knowing more about these endangered animals, and even to contribute in doing something to help.
I find this whole concept interesting. I think that the whole motive behind the “ringtones from the wild” is good. After all, there really is no better way to get through to the young generation nowadays than to reach them via their cell phones. However, I don’t really see all that many young people changing their ringtones from their favorite songs to these new and unusual sounds from the wild. It’s all about what’s popular, particularly with people under 20 years of age or so. Perhaps the revolution in ringtones will catch on for a lot of people, or perhaps it won’t. But I think that if environmental groups really want to get people interested in endangered animals, somewhere along the line they will find some solid methods of doing it. I think that other good ways of educating young people about these types of environmental issues involving endangered species might include television programs and/or advertisements or learning about the situation in schools.
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March 2, 2007 at 5:08 pm
This is definitely a creative idea, but I personally don’t know if kids will go for it. I feel like there would have to be some other kind of benefit to having these animal sounds as ringtones, because some people might not like it. It’s a good start though and maybe they will be able to figure something out that the kids today would consider “cool” and then also become more aware of the endangered species in our world.