For his 1991 film Backdraft, director Ron Howard wanted fire to have a “brain,” like the shark in Jaws. So sound designer Gary Rydstrom added animal growls and howls to the sound of the flames. “You don’t hear them as animal sounds, but subconsciously it gives it an intelligence or a complexity it wouldn’t normally have.”

“For the suck in of air we used coyote howls. It wasn’t just a simple wind — it was more intelligent.”

“A lot of the fireball explosions were sweetened with monkey screams and different animal growls. Cougars make a great fire explosion sweetener. There’s a complexity to natural sounds, especially animal sounds, that is really wonderful.”

(From Vincent LoBrutto, Sound-on-Film, 1994.)