The long-range echo scene of the sperm whale biosonar ...
Sperm whales use their gigantic nose to produce the most powerful sounds in the animal kingdom, presumably to echolocate deep-sea prey at long ranges and possibly to debilitate prey. To test these hypotheses, we deployed sound recording tags (DTAG-4) on the tip of the nose of three sperm whales. One...
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| Format: | Dataset |
| Language: | English |
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Dryad
2020
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| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.tqjq2bvwg https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.tqjq2bvwg |
| Summary: | Sperm whales use their gigantic nose to produce the most powerful sounds in the animal kingdom, presumably to echolocate deep-sea prey at long ranges and possibly to debilitate prey. To test these hypotheses, we deployed sound recording tags (DTAG-4) on the tip of the nose of three sperm whales. One of these recordings yielded over 6000 echo streams from organisms detected up to 144 m ahead of the whale, supporting a long-range prey detection function of the sperm whale biosonar. The whale navigated this complex acoustic scene by maintaining a stable, long-range acoustic gaze suggesting continual resource evaluation. Less than 10% of the echoic organisms recorded by the tag were targeted for capture and only 18% of the buzzes were emitted within the 50 m depth interval of maximum organism encounter rate, demonstrating echo guided prey selection. Buzzes were initiated >20 m from the prey, showing that sperm whales do not debilitate their prey with sound, but trade echo levels for reduced forward masking ... : This dataset was collected using a dtag version 4. Standard tools from http://www.animaltags.org as well as custom made matlab routines were used to analyze the data. ... |
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