Dog whistle

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A dog whistle (also known as silent whistle or Galton's whistle) is a type of whistle used in the training of dogs and cats. It was invented by Francis Galton. This is discussed quite briefly in his book Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development (Galton 1883:27). In his discussion (Galton 1883:26-27) of his experiments to test the range of frequencies that could be heard by various animals including humans, he notes that cats had the most sensitive hearing, being able to hear notes too shrill for humans to hear from a considerable distance, and small dogs can also hear these notes, while large dogs cannot. This book may not currently be in print, but is available in two formats, HTML and PDF (the PDF can be downloaded) at [1]

The frequency range of a dog whistle is largely out of the range of human hearing. Typically, a dog whistle is within the range of 16000 Hz to 22000 Hz with only the frequencies below 20000 Hz audible to the human ear. Some dog whistles have adjustable sliders for active control of the frequency produced.

Depending on the way the whistle is used, a trainer may simply gather a dog's attention or inflict pain for the purpose of behavior modification.

The name dog whistle is often used for both lung-powered whistles as well as electronic devices that emit ultrasonic sound via piezoelectric emitters. The electronic variety are sometimes coupled with bark detection circuits in an effort to curb barking behavior.

These kind of whistles are also used to determine the hearing range of people or for physics demonstrations.

Some political observers have used the phrase "dog-whistle politics" to refer to the use of words and phrases that one's political allies will recognize and appreciate but that may not mean anything to other listeners.

Some cell phone ringtone providers invented a so-called dog whistle ringtone that can be heard by young people, but not old ones (the spectrum of frequencies that a human can hear narrows with age) so that high school students can have their cellular phones on in class, but the sound was so unpleasant that most teenagers preferred not to have their phones on. Since then, the dog whistle ringtone has been used mostly by bullies to annoy other people.^{[citation needed]}