Largest natural sound archive digitalized and online

What was the Internet made for if not to easily access nature? Cat photos rule supreme, and now Cornell University (the folks who also mapped a tomato genome) has digitalized the world’s largest natural sound and placed it online.
 
The collection, archived in the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, goes back to 1929. The entire thing can be heard at Macaulay Library’s website.
 
The whole digitization, which contains about 150,000 audio recordings i.e. more than 10 terabytes of data with a 7,513-hour run time, took twelve years. Throughout the collection, 9,000 species are represented. It includes mostly birds, but also whales, elephants, frogs, monkeys and all that good nature stuff.
 
"Our audio collection is the largest and the oldest in the world," explained Macaulay Library director Mike Webster. "Now, it’s also the most accessible. We’re working to improve search functions and create tools people can use to collect recordings and upload them directly to the archive. Our goal is to make the Macaulay Library as useful as possible for the broadest audience possible."
 
The clips can be used for anything from commercials to scientific research to a dude chilling in his living room with a beer and a penchant for listening to robin’s twitter.