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Precocious hearing in harbour porpoise neonates

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Abstract

Hearing is the primary sensory modality for toothed whales, but it is not known at which age it is fully developed. For newborn calves, hearing could fill an important function in maintaining contact with the mother and to develop echolocation skills. We non-invasively measured the auditory brainstem response (ABR) in two neonate (age 1–4 days) and three adult harbour porpoises (Phocoena phocoena). The stimuli consisted of clicks centred at 130 kHz, which is within the frequency band used for echolocation and communication in this species. The temporal pattern of the neonate ABRs was indistinguishable to the adult ones. There were no significant differences between calves and adults regarding hearing thresholds and ABR latencies. The ABR amplitudes were up to more than an order of magnitude larger in newborns than in adults, most likely due to the neonates’ smaller size. These results indicate that hearing is fully developed within a day after birth, which suggests that harbour porpoise neonates have the earliest hearing development of any mammal studied so far. This may be explained by the evolutionary pressures imposed by the aquatic environment for a rapid development of the key sensory system in harbour porpoises.

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Acknowledgements

The experiments were performed according to the ethical rules of Danish Council for Experiments on Animals. The animals are held at the Fjord&Bælt under a contract of the Danish Nature Agency, Ministry of Environment and Food of Denmark, J.nr.NST-41500-00212. We thank all the trainers and volunteers helping out with observing the calf and preparing for the ABR trials, and Kristian Beedholm for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. This project was funded by grants from the Danish National Research Council to Peter Madsen, Annemarie Surlykke, and Magnus Wahlberg.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Marine Biological Research Centre, University of Southern Denmark, Hindsholmsvej 11, 5300, Kerteminde, Denmark

    Magnus Wahlberg & Lara Delgado-García

  2. Fjord&Bælt, Margrethes Plads 1, 5300, Kerteminde, Denmark

    Jakob H. Kristensen

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  1. Magnus Wahlberg
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  2. Lara Delgado-García
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  3. Jakob H. Kristensen
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Correspondence to Magnus Wahlberg.

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Wahlberg, M., Delgado-García, L. & Kristensen, J.H. Precocious hearing in harbour porpoise neonates. J Comp Physiol A 203, 121–132 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-017-1145-0

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