milo, country boy that you are, perhaps you'll enjoy this:
some years ago, in an article in Natural History (a magazine produced by the Am. Mus of Natural History (here in NY)this story was related.
a curator and a naturalist were walking down Amsterdam ave. (a busy street, with several sidewalk cafes, many high rise buildings, lots of traffic (including city buses)--a typical urban environment)
at one point the naturalist stopped, and said "listen--a cricket" the curator, stopped, but he couldn't hear anything.
the natualist, nodded, and said "no, you wouldn't.." he then put his hand in his pocket, and dropped some change on the sidewalk.
several people stopped, and looked about..
the naturalist bent over an picked up the coins.. (someone helpfully pointed out one coin had rolled, and indicated where it came to rest.)
the naturalist asked the curator, "so what coins did i drop?"
with out hesitation, the curator, said, "well, at least on quarter, a couple of dimes and pennies."
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Here, in NYC humans have learned there are certain noises to pay attention to, and certain noises that can be ignored.
crickets can be (and are ignored) but money falling on concrete, (a noise about as loud as cricket's mating call) is an important noise. we NYer's can differentciate, (well almost all of us can!), the noise made by a quarter, and the one made by a penny. (and almost every other coin)
the naturalist, visiting NY (on a break from feild study, still had 'country ears' and heard country sounds, sounds that were import to his work in the field.
NYer's hear city noises.
both the curator and the naturalist could hear (and classify) faint noises in their environments.
Its not that one had better hearing, but rather, each had trained their ears to hear different thing.
if i had to hunt for my food (meat) i would eat very little of it. i would (i think) learn to be more aware of noises and tells in the woods if i lived there, and needed to learn to hear them, (to survive, or even just to live well.)
You might find a city like NY a cacaphony at first, but, if you lived here, you too, would soon be able to hear a penny drop (and most definately hear a quarter drop!) even with all the louder background noise.
culture (and location) tunes are ears.. and depending on the culture we live, we will learn to respond to different cues. different noises will have different values.
Is it better to be able to hear a cricket? or the clink of quarter hitting concrete? depends on where you live.
--humans are uniquely able to alter there perceptions and to value different thing in different environments.
being able to hear and catogorize the important noises in the environment we live in, is important to our sucess, (personally and as a species)
while it might not be import to most humans to be able to hear a cricket, to a scientist involved in studying an enviorment, it could be. You might very well hear things in your environment that i would miss. I most likely hear things that you would miss (here in NY).
there are some IQ test that are culturally (environmentally) biased. but being able to hear and distingish the important sound in the enviroment we live in is a measure of intellect.
i might not hear (or distingish) country sounds as well as you do, but i generally don't need to.
well developed IQ test recognize that there are different inteligences, (and different ways to measure them).
