Of Recording Life and Saving Life

Congratulations to Cornell University’s Macaulay Library, “the world’s largest and oldest scientific archive of biodiversity audio and video recordings.”  It is an expansive effort to capture and preserve the sounds of life of the entire animal kingdom, an important part of preserving life itself. 

It really is wondrous to find the recorded sounds, and in many cases recorded videos, of so many species of animal life.  This ongoing effort has been decades in the making, to save—and to make available—the sounds and sights of what has been in the making since before time.  The goal is to record it all, the entire encyclopedia of animal life.  The task is daunting, and may never be finished, but these busy “recordists” are ever getting more and progressing closer to their unreachable completion.  You can wander through what they have done so far here:

http://macaulaylibrary.org/

It reminds me of another effort that I learned about a few years ago to collect and save seeds from every species of plant life.  Again, that is another effort that may never be finished but which is ever getting closer and more complete.

Each of these works is a powerful reminder of how much variety the Lord has created for us all, how complex and intricate and diverse life is.  It is also one more source of awe for the work of the Lord of Life and the magnificence of God’s creation.

Considering this wondrous variety and the greatness of life in all of its many forms, I do not find it credible to assume that among the galaxies—or even within our own galaxy—this is the only world where life is to be found.  Why would God create all the rest of the numberless worlds?  The answer is, to do there much of what He is doing here, to “bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:39)

In a modern-day revelation the Lord confirmed what the Apostle John taught, that Jesus Christ is not only the Creator of this world but of the many worlds (see John 1:1-3).  The Lord added, that Christ is also God of people on those many worlds, “That by him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God.” (Doctrine and Covenants 76:24)  Note from this revelation that God’s eternal work, too, is still going on and will never be finished.

Returning to the Macaulay Library project, there is pleasure and wonder in wandering through the recordings.  Below is a link to just one inspiring example, recorded nearly 50 years ago.  It saves for us the sound of an ostrich, still in the egg, shortly before it emerges—not into life since it is clearly already alive, an appropriate part of the recorded history of living things—but shortly before it emerges into the open:

http://macaulaylibrary.org/audio/793/struthio-camelus-ostrich-united-states-new-york-william-dilger

You have to be patient and listen through the chatter of the recordists.  The wait is worth it, and of course the people doing the work merit remembrance in sound, too, as no less active and valuable members of the society of the living.

Therefore, a concluding thought I would leave you with:  it would be a tragedy to lose recordings like these, as much as it is a treasure to have and preserve them.  Consider the greater tragedy if rather than recording these sounds the recordists crushed the egg and the life within it.  What a loss, a waste, and a sin.  What if the recordists recorded such wanton destruction and shared that with the world.  We and many others would be disgusted, in fact we would be right to be outraged.  Would those same people be outraged when a human life, still encased and protected in his or her mother’s womb, is wantonly destroyed, its life crushed and ended? I do not know if there are any sound or video recordings of such destruction.  Would it continue at the rate of millions of destructive acts each year if there were?  I wonder.