Harbour Porpoise Visual Deprivation Dive Response

• Main Author: Bakkeren, C (via Mendeley Data)
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Interdisciplinary sciences; Harbour porpoise; toothed whales
• Online Access: http://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:nl:ui:13-8e-z3eg; https://easy.dans.knaw.nl/ui/datasets/id/easy-dataset:271213

By investigating the heart rate of a trained harbour porpoise during a two-alternative forced choice task, where the animal is either acoustically masked or blindfolded, we test the hypothesis that sensory deprivation will lead to a stronger dive response to conserve oxygen when facing a more uncertain and smaller sensory umwelt. We show that the porpoise halves its diving heart rate (from 55 to 25 bpm) when blindfolded, but presents no change in heart rate during masking of its echolocation. Therefore, visual stimuli may matter more to echolocating toothed whales than previously assumed, and sensory deprivation can be a major driver of the dive response, possibly as an anti-predator measure. THIS DATASET IS ARCHIVED AT DANS/EASY, BUT NOT ACCESSIBLE HERE. TO VIEW A LIST OF FILES AND ACCESS THE FILES IN THIS DATASET CLICK ON THE DOI-LINK ABOVE