Stimulus Control of Echolocation Pulses in Tursiops truncatus

Abstract

Until recently, it was extremely difficult to determine what cue or set of cues a dolphin used in detecting or differentiating between targets by means of its sonar system. One of the major problems was the ambiguous nature of the echo return in relation to the position of the dolphin during pulse emission and prior to the animal’s choice response. In this experiment, we solved the problem by acquiring unambiguous control over a dolphin’s position and pulse emission while it was actively engaged in a discriminative echolocation task.