An often overlooked collectable is the dog whistle, something many of us who aren’t trainers, or are outside of gun dogs or competitive herding don’t really use.  That aside, the dog whistle has an interesting history. Francis Galton is credited with having invented the dog whistle, also known as “Galton’s Whistle,” or the silent whistle, but did you know that Galton was Charles Darwin’s half cousin?

Dog Whistle by Pookas and available at http://pookas.de/

To test differential hearing ability, Galton invented a device that worked like a slide whistle, a brass tube with a sliding bit that could make the note produced by blowing in the tube higher and higher. Once the adjustable piece slid past a certain point, Galton couldn’t hear it, but he knew the whistle was still producing sound.  He tried this whistle out on various animals at the London zoo where, according to his notes, it annoyed some of the lions. He was also fond of walking down the streets and seeing which types of dogs could hear higher pitches (small dogs were better than big dogs).  He discovered that by changing the shape and length of a whistle, he could change the frequency produced by it.  The shorter the whistle’s tube, the higher the sound it produced.  This lead to a refinement that produced the dog whistle as we know today, a device that produces such a high-pitched sound because the tube is only about an inch long.

Image found on Pinterest and happily credited upon receipt of information

Galton’s brilliance also brought us meteorology, devised the first weather map, and coined the phrase “nature versus nurture” (he also had some ideas on eugenics that were controversial). His whistle, however, played a significant role in our understanding of auditory processing. It helped determine that the normal upper limit of human hearing was about 18 kHz, and that the ability to hear higher frequencies declined with age.  It also revealed that dogs can ear sounds both, above and below the range of human ears. And, it’s become a collectable.

Thumbnail image: Precious Dog Whistle by Pookas.

Image found on Pinterest and happily credited upon receipt of information