If you are going to be spending time with extended relatives this Thanksgiving, consider testing the Mosquito Ringtone if you still doubt it actually works! It’s a great time to do this as you will probably have a wide range of age groups from which to test! Visit the hearing test to get started. The older family members will find they can only hear up to 12-16k depending on their age and the young ones should be able to hear them all. This is the technology behind the ultrasonic ringtone that students use in class to receive cell phone calls and text messages.

Some people claim that the mosquito ringtone doesn’t work as they are older and can still hear the tones, this is only partly true. It really does work…… for the majority of the population. There is no known single cause of presbycusis, the medical condition that affects the ability to hear the Mosquito Ringotne, only things that “might” contribute to it.

We have seen adults that could hear the mosquito ringtone but based on our age range estimates they should not have been able to hear it. I myself have witnessed it’s effects as I can no longer hear some of the high frequencies I was be able to hear when this website was put online several years ago.

The whole ability to hear high frequencies seems to fascinate people when I show it to them, I thought it would a cool thing to share with your family this Thanksgiving.

I was recently browsing the app store on my iPhone when I came across the dog whistle iPhone app from a company called Wawa Mobile that claims that by using ultrasonic frequencies on the iPhone, you can call your dog with it and it was only $0.99 to download it. The concept is similar to the ultrasonic ringtones in which dogs have much better hearing than humans, young or old. They have an even much wider range of hearing than those that are not affected by presbycusis do!

The App:
It’s a single screen app that has all the options on it including a slider to adjust the frequency of the “Whistle” and a bark detector! If you enjoy playing around with mosquito ringtones and seeing who can hear what, it’s worth it to be able to change the frequencies quickly.

It didn’t quite work for me with my dogs though, but I have’t had a lot of time to spend fine tunning the frequency yet. I did notice that when I played some of the frequencies that correspond to our free ringtones of the same frequency, my kids where unable to hear them as the normally do on my website. Either the frequencies are off or it’s getting changed/modified somehow. I hope to have time soon to fine tune it for my dog and see if it is a viable replacement for a dog whistle.

We had a suggestion from one of our visitors and we decided to add a new area to the website, “Mosquito Games”. These are simple free flash games that you can play that involve mosquitoes. Now you can blast them, swat them and even become a mosquito in order to save the world!

We thought what better way to entertain our visitors then to let you have fun playing with the mosquitoes!

Play Mosquito Games

If you know of any other mosquito games please let us know! We’ll be looking out for them too!

In 1997, 17-year-old student Daniel Malmedahl recorded audio of himself impersonating the noises produced by internal combustion engines. He posted the sounds on a website that caught the attention of a Swedish television researcher, who convinced Daniel to perform the sound live on the air. After the annoying thing debuted on TV, recordings of his performance began appearing on P2P file sharing networks and various websites under the filename “2TAKTARE.MP3″ (”Tvåtaktare” is Swedish for “Two stroker”).

The sound effect was quickly included in Flash animations that spread virally among Internet users becoming an Internet phenomenon. Arguably, the most famous example was the Insanity Test, which challenged listeners to keep a straight face while staring at a still photograph of Rubens Barrichello, a Brazilian Formula One racing driver in a Ferrari Formula 1 car as the outrageous sound effect was played.

In 2004, the German-based company, Jamba! Group (eventually owned by VeriSign who then sold 51% of the group to Fox in 2006) licensed the animation and sound for distribution as a mobile phone ringtone. It is arguably the most commercially successful ringtone of all time. Jamba! has also produced other successful animated creature ringtones, including Sweety the Chick and Nessie the Dragon, and produced other ringtones featuring the Crazy Frog including Crazy DJ Frog. There is also a series of Crazy Frog World Tour tones featuring the Frog performing his usual vocalizations against backgrounds of various countries’ musical styles. These include the sitar-based “Crazy Frog India”, reggae-flavoured “Crazy Frog Jamaica” and John Barnes-esque “Crazy Frog Australian Rock”.

What do you think of the Crazy Frog Ringtone compared to the Mosquito Ringtone? Both of them got their fame from the Internet!

Many older electronics emit high frequency sounds that work on the same principle as the Mosquito Ringtone. A few weeks ago I was in the finance department at a car dealership, buying a car for my 17-year old son. As soon as the old model dot matrix printer started warming up he was asking who was playing the Mosquito Ringtone…… except nobody was, and no one but him heard the buzzing!

This was unusual as there were four adults in the room, including one I know can hear the Ultra Sonic Ringtone, we call the Mosquito Ringtone.

I can remember growing up in the 80’s and hearing those big bulky tube TV’s turn on from across the house because they emitted a very high frequency sound. I don’t however have any idea if current flat panel LCDs and Plasma TV emit those same sounds because I haven’t been able ot hear the ultrasonic ringtone in years! Next time you that the ringtone is annoying or hurts your ears, go find some real old electronics and see if they aren’t worse!

What everyday devices do you know of that emit these Mosquito Ringtone like sounds? – leave your comments below