Field Guide: North American Gotnah Lifus

There are 32 species of dial tones worldwide. I am listening to one of them in the quiet hours of a Sunday morning. The threshing rain outside fights for dominion but the call of the dial tone is loud and clear. This particular tone, native to Western North America, makes its mating ground in the fertile valley of the lonely. Its call is a low frequency hum that begins at an almost inaudible pitch that soon grows to 60 decibels or more, mesmerizing any listener in its tracks. What I find so interesting about the dial tone is that this is both its mating call and its modus operandi when stalking and killing its prey. It preys only on the weak-willed and the lonely. While dial tones may be cute and fuzzy, make no mistake about it. They are predatory animals that attack with precision and immense ferocity. The Australian dial tone, a variant on the North American tone, is higher in pitch and has a venom that is considered the most deadly and obnoxious of the species. Tonologists, scientists who study the tones to learn more about their majestic yet deadly call, must be careful when handling them. Their self-indulgent call makes them easy to spot but they are difficult to grasp. One must hold them firmly by the protruding handle on the nape of the neck. The only way to kill a tone is to cradle the beast in the handset. I recently visited Professor Martin Barbanali at the UCLA Department of Dial Tone Studies to learn more about the tone and its effect on humans. His gracious volunteers seem to be in no immediate danger, but after hours of exposure to the tone they seem to be exhibiting signs of depression, anxiety, and in extreme cases, mania. One participant tried to explain the mood that listening to the call brought about. "I had a sense of longing, of waiting for something that was never going to happen. Of feeling extremely alone. It made me uncomfortable and... sad." It is clear that more studies of this nature are necessary to determine just how and why the dial tone has this effect on humans, but for now it would be prudent to avoid prolonged exposure to the tone whenever possible. Copyright 1998 Jennifer Chung All rights reserved & fully asserted. Go Back