Abstract
Early studies of marine mammals underwater were driven by awe, imagination, and the wealth they represented from oil, bone, and flesh. Aristotle recognized that these animals are mammals and wrote of their unusual acoustic abilities. Later, scientists erroneously categorized them as fishes until Linnaeus restored them to Mammalia. Not until the mid-twentieth century, when new tools for underwater acoustics appeared, was it revealed that marine mammals rely primarily on hearing for communicating, finding prey, and detecting predators. With more sophisticated technology in the 1950s, field recordings and behavioral work with captive marine mammals showed that they produce and detect sounds ranging from infrasonic to ultrasonic frequencies. Hearing underwater is accomplished by an essentially mammalian auditory system that re-adapted to water, and some species have ultrasonic inner ears like those of bats, but with unique fatty tissues for reception of water-borne sound. From 1960 onward, advances were made particularly in understanding the mechanisms of dolphin biosonar. Recent research initiated studies on hearing in free-ranging animals and broadened the field to more species, but many of the original puzzles remain unsolved and are still being investigated today.
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Notes
- 1.
First published in 1966 as a technical report: US Naval Ordnance Test Station Report T. P. 4178, 1966, 28 pp.
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Acknowledgments
There are too many exceptional scientists who advanced our knowledge of marine mammals to properly acknowledge all. This chapter is dedicated to a few whom we had the privilege to know and were fortunate to have as mentors, colleagues, and friends. Bill Watkins and Bill Schevill, assisted in his early work by his wife, Barbara Lawrence, an outstanding scientist in her own right, laid the foundation for and influenced marine mammal acoustic work over the subsequent 70Â years. In addition to their many publications and archived recordings, they set the standard for inventing and using state-of-the-art equipment coupled with insightful natural history observations to unravel crucial questions about these fascinating mammals. They also imbued the field with their high integrity.
Sam Ridgway was the epitome of a dedicated veterinarian and innovative scientist who approached his work with great intellect and his friends with great humor. He is rightly considered to have created the field of marine mammal medicine, and his work on dolphin hearing set critical benchmarks for that research. He is arguably one of the giants upon whose shoulders all future marine mammal researchers stand.
Jeanette Thomas was a pioneer, who bravely entered a field in which women were rare. To that, add her dedication to mentoring young scientists coupled with a sparkling personality. These qualities made her not only a great scientist but also a successful organizer of multiple international meetings that turned marine mammal science into a truly global discipline.
Dr. Doris Meyerdiercks and Dr. Dorothe Poggel of the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK) provided invaluable advice, support, and encouragement throughout this entire project. This is publication #1581 from The Institute of Environment at Florida International University.
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Wartzok, D., Ketten, D.R. (2024). Discoveries in Marine Mammal Hearing. In: Ketten, D.R., Coffin, A.B., Fay, R.R., Popper, A.N. (eds) A History of Discoveries on Hearing. Springer Handbook of Auditory Research, vol 77. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41320-9_7
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