Dolphins: Repertoire of Sounds

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ambience: dolphin underwater vocalizations

Dolphins produce a wide range of sounds underwater, and they’ll use these signals to interact with each other and to navigate and explore their environment. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet. Diana Reis is a senior research scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society at the NY Aquarium.

“They have a rich variety of sounds they use. For example, they use whistles which are narrow signals that change over time, and narrow frequency that can change. They also use echo location, or sonar, that’s what you’re hearing now. These are wide frequency clicks. They go from low frequencies way up high, to about 180 kHz, way outside of our hearing, in the ultrasonic range. They can sound like creaky doors or like single clicks. And that gives them information about the distance, size, shape, of objects in their environment. We think that they get reflected echoes back from sending out these clicks and they get an acoustic picture of their world. It’s basically sonar. Normally, when you see animals approach each other, they’ll either start echo locating or whistling really quickly, or often you’ll get jaw claps at each other. But usually there’s a great deal of vocalization going on. It’s a rich repertoire.

We’ll hear about recent research in dolphin intelligence in future programs.

To hear about our new CD, please visit pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet is presented by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.

music

Dolphins: Repertoire of Sounds

Dolphins have a repertoire of sounds for communication and defining their environment.
Air Date:09/29/2003
Scientist:
Transcript:


music
ambience: dolphin underwater vocalizations

Dolphins produce a wide range of sounds underwater, and they'll use these signals to interact with each other and to navigate and explore their environment. I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet. Diana Reis is a senior research scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society at the NY Aquarium.

"They have a rich variety of sounds they use. For example, they use whistles which are narrow signals that change over time, and narrow frequency that can change. They also use echo location, or sonar, that’s what you’re hearing now. These are wide frequency clicks. They go from low frequencies way up high, to about 180 kHz, way outside of our hearing, in the ultrasonic range. They can sound like creaky doors or like single clicks. And that gives them information about the distance, size, shape, of objects in their environment. We think that they get reflected echoes back from sending out these clicks and they get an acoustic picture of their world. It’s basically sonar. Normally, when you see animals approach each other, they’ll either start echo locating or whistling really quickly, or often you’ll get jaw claps at each other. But usually there’s a great deal of vocalization going on. It's a rich repertoire.

We'll hear about recent research in dolphin intelligence in future programs.

To hear about our new CD, please visit pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet is presented by the National Science Foundation. I'm Jim Metzner.

music