Is it inevitable for tiny humans to have very high pitched voices?
Let's say there's a humanoid species that are essencialy humans but tiny, around 13cm tall. As their vocal chords are smaller they would have high pitched voices, but could that effect be minimized in a biologically possible way?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/163994. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1 answer
They could have syrinxes in addition to larynges. This would permit them a much greater vocal range, and hence disproportionately low voices for their sizes. (Their voices would still be higher than a full-sized, anatomically-correct human's, though.)
To get an even lower range, they could have a structure that they vibrated directly, like a speaker. Human-sized muscles can't vibrate fast enough to get much beyond the very lower part of the human hearing range, but (wild speculation!!) perhaps smaller muscles could vibrate fast enough to give a range overlapping slightly with the syrinx range?
0 comment threads