One of the most iconic things about the Jurassic Park films is their dinosaur noises. From T-rex to brachiosaurus, these dinosaurs were brought back to life on the big screens.
But apart from using CGI of course, how did the film producers bring these dinosaurs to life?
Not surprisingly, a lot of thought went into it.
Let’s start off with dilophosaurus, the dinosaur with the frilled crest. Dilophosaurus was first introduced in Jurassic Park as making “swan” sounds. But when it became that fearsome dinosaur that spat venom all over their prey (fun fact - dilophosaurus don’t actually spit venom), the producers used a combination of a rattlesnake and hawk noises.
Then there’s the stampede of gallimimus, aka the herd of dinosaurs that look like the velociraptor, but not as scary (at least that’s what I think). The producers recorded a female horse in heat that squealed when a male horse walked past her.
Meanwhile the brachiosaurus noise came from donkeys. And when the brachiosaurus was sneezing, that came from a whale blowhole.
Then we have the famous velociraptors. The source of the raptor’s barks when communicating with each other in the film was tortoises mating. Aka, for those who watched the films, we were hearing tortoises having sex. Nice.
Meanwhile the raptor’s screams came from a male dolphin vocalising during their mating courtship. The producers also used horses to create the sound of the raptor breathing, and goose for the raptor’s hiss.
And the baby raptor? That came from a baby owl.
Finally, we have the famous T-rex. That mighty roar came from a baby elephant. And its grunts? From the mating calls of a male koala.
So, the one thing we can learn from here, is that most of the dinosaur noises in Jurassic Park were sourced from animals in fucking or trying to fuck. I guess it’s like we’re inadvertently listening to animal porno.
But there remains one question. What do dinosaurs actually sound like? Especially since most of these noises were sourced from mammals when dinosaurs are more closely related to birds.
Well not surprisingly, scientists can only theorise what the dinosaurs sounded like. This is because most of the structures used to produce sound are muscle and cartilage that don’t fossilise.
But scientists can infer the dinosaur’s vocalisation from the dinosaur’s physical structure.
Some dinosaurs like brachiosaurus have super elongated necks that would have altered the sounds they produced, similar to a trombone. Others had their skulls structured in a way that could amplify and alter the tones they produced.
Dinosaurs also have elongated cochlea, indicating that they communicated using low-frequency sounds and infrasound.
Scientists have also analysed the vocalisation of the dinosaur’s living ancestors - birds and reptiles. From their analysis, they discovered that the dinosaurs probably made closed-mouth vocalisations. Aka, similar to crocodiles.
What’s even more interesting is that scientists also discovered that dinosaurs make more of a cooing sound, similar to doves.
Pretty interesting right?
So, it’s quite clear that Jurassic Park really went for the special effects with animal porno noises. I guess you can’t really blame them when it turns out dinosaurs actually sound like a dove. I mean, dinosaurs cooing will sure make them look hella fearsome.