Natures wonders: dolphin echolocation (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, July 08, 2015, 15:53 (3424 days ago) @ David Turell

Dolphins use sonar better than any other animal for hunting and perhaps communicating:-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150707082344.htm-"The data from the DTI scans allowed the researchers to map out the white matter pathways, essentially the wiring diagram for the dolphin brain, in high detail. The results show that the dolphin auditory nerve enters the brain stem region and connects both to the temporal lobe (the auditory region of many terrestrial mammals) and to another part of the brain near the apex known as the primary visual region.-"The researchers hypothesize that dolphins have more than one neural area associated with sound because they are using sound for different purposes.-"Dolphins emit clicks, squawks, whistles and burst-pulse sounds to communicate, navigate and hunt. Echolocation allows them to perceive objects by bouncing sound off surfaces.-"'Dolphins are the most sophisticated users of biological sonar in the animal kingdom," Marino says. "They can find fish hidden from sight in sand with ease."-"Experiments have shown that dolphins can echolocate on a hidden, complex 3-D shape and then pick out that shape by sight. "They can rapidly move back and forth between their senses of sight and sound," Marino says.-"One dolphin's echolocation signals and echoes may be picked up by another dolphin, she adds. "They have a complex communication system and a unique ability to emit different types of sounds, like a click and a whistle, simultaneously.'"