1. Atlantic bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) hearing threshold for brief broadband signals
- Author
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David W. Lemonds, Paul E. Nachtigall, Whitlow W. L. Au, Herbert L. Roitblat, and Stephanie Vlachos
- Subjects
Physics ,Appetitive Behavior ,Sound Spectrography ,Absolute threshold of hearing ,biology ,Dolphins ,Acoustics ,Auditory Threshold ,Human echolocation ,Bottlenose dolphin ,biology.organism_classification ,Pitch Discrimination ,Fishery ,Auditory stimulation ,Echolocation ,QUIET ,Broadband ,Animals ,Female ,Psychology (miscellaneous) ,Center frequency ,Auditory thresholds ,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics ,Psychoacoustics - Abstract
The hearing sensitivity of an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) to both pure tones and broadband signals simulating echoes from a 7.62-cm water-filled sphere was measured. Pure tones with frequencies between 40 and 140 kHz in increments of 20 kHz were measured along with broadband thresholds using a stimulus with a center frequency of 97.3 kHz and 88.2 kHz. The pure-tone thresholds were compared with the broadband thresholds by converting the pure-tone threshold intensity to energy flux density. The results indicated that dolphins can detect broadband signals slightly better than a pure-tone signal. The broadband results suggest that an echolocating bottlenose dolphin should be able to detect a 7.62-cm diameter water-filled sphere out to a range of 178 m in a quiet environment.
- Published
- 2002
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