I’ve heard people claim that subsonic sounds can cause people to lose bowel control while the sound emits. However, I looked for info on this and every site I found which supported it, didn’t look very credible. Anyone know anything about this?
You might try searching the term “infrasonic.” Subsonic means slower than sound, which is by definition something other than sound.
Either way, I was referring to extremely low frequencies, which cannot be heard by humans.
Infrasonic or infrasound will find you some stuff, but a lot of it is a bit quackish too.
Although it does sound stupid, subsonic does mean ‘of less than audible frequency’ as well as the more logical slower than the speed of sound. Supersonic has the same duality.
Oddly, I came across a site the other day offering a “mosquito repellant” programme for download (the frequency of the sound is supposed to disorient the mosquitoes).
If, in fact, very low frequency sounds do cause lack of bowel control (I’ve heard of ultra high frequency sounds being tested as a military weapon - supposedly causing acute vomiting), then I suspect some enterprising spammer would attached them to emails by now (not to mention the skiddies would have imbedded them on hacked websites all over the place).
There is some evidence that tigers have an infrasound growl below the range of human hearing that can cause paralysis, even in experienced trainers.
Try including the phrase “brown note” in your searches (seriously) - I was pretty sure that Cecil had covered this too, but I can’t find anything in the archive.
What you are perhaps refering to is something known as “Vibroacoustic Disease”. A regular search on Google yields a lot of sites about Puerto Rico, and problems related with military activity there. Most of it is political stuff, with very little info about the disease itself.
A search on medline, however, produces a few interesting results.
In university, I was told that exposure to low to sub-audio frequencies caused epileptic seisures in some people, but I had never heard anything about bowel control.
Here’s an old thread about it; http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=10755
I read somewhere that old theaters used to sometimes use low frequency sounds during horror films because it made people edgy and uncomfortable (to add to the “spooky” atmosphere of the movie I suppose). They never mentioned problems of overcrowded toilets or massive seat cleanups required so I’m thinking that bowel thing is a bit of an urban legend.
This remionds me of the old story about Nikola Tesla. he supposedly built a vibrating platform; standing on it was supposed to relieve fatigue, as well as minor aches and pains. Standing on it too long, OTOH, was said to cause diarrhea. Could this be the root of the “brown note” story?
Yeah, I thought it sounded like BS.