Self-Changing of Animal Hearing to Mitigate the Effects of Loud Sound
Abstract
Work on the hearing of animals while they echolocate (Supin et al, 2008: Nachtigall et al 2008) has demonstrated that hearing sensitivity changes with echolocation condition. False killer whales, bottlenose dolphins (Li et al, 2012) and harbor porpoises (Linnenschmidt et al, 2012) maximize hearing of echoes and minimize sensitivity to loud outgoing clicks. These observations led to the idea that perhaps these animals might also change hearing sensitivity out side of the echolocation situation. Perhaps they might protect their own hearing by reducing sensitivity if they were warned to a loud impulsive sound was about to arrive. The long term goal of this work is to examine whether or not cetaceans will change their hearing sensitivity when warned that a loud impulsive sound is about to immediately arrive.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 30, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADA573673
Entities
People
- Paul E. Nachtigall