Talk:Animal echolocation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of the Neuroethology WikiProject, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Neuroethology. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.

(Wesley R. Elsberry, 1850/02/26) There are a number of issues with this page that I think should be scrutinized. I've made a pass at correcting some of the stuff here that I knew to be wrong or misleading, but have left other parts that I am merely suspicious of.

Edited:

- Removed weasel-word "possibly" from in front of 'whales'. This is a definite thing: toothed whales do use biosonar.

- Added sentence concerning Spallanzani's investigation on bat navigation, added date to Griffin's discovery of bat ultrasound.

- Added turbidity to list of reasons for odontocete biosonar use.

- Removed "from water" in description of differing densities of lipids in the melon. Acoustic lensing just needs different densities. Another issue is that it is likely that the melon also performs an impedance-matching function, and for that the density relative to water will be an issue.

- Substantially changed the sound production section for odontocete biosonar. The version of sound production stated originally dated back to the 1960s. Lots of research has been done since then.

- Tweaked the odontocete sound reception text.

- Added the bibliography entry for Ted Cranford's review article. When the articles detailing the 1999 set of experiments get published, I will add them.

A question for the Wikipedians: Is it appropriate to cite a doctoral dissertation in the bibliography? If so, mine covers a lot of territory concerning acoustics, physiology, and bioenergetics of bottlenose dolphin biosonar.

Things to examine:

- The list of species using biosonar looks very incomplete. There are reports of biosonar use in rats, honey badgers, shrews, etc.

- Describing the vocalizations of odontocetes is tricky. Researchers won't even agree on calling it "vocalization". Some species have never been observed to produce whistles. Most of the descriptive terms for vocalizations actually describe click trains with various parameters of repetition rate.

- This sentence seems suspicious: "Lateral sound may be received though fatty lobes surrounding the ears with a similar acoustic density to bone." I'd be way surprised to find any fatty tissue that comes close to the acoustic density of the bone of the ear.

this is referenced from Reynolds & Rommell, i'm inclined to go with them Emoscopes 12:56, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll be back on this one. It sounds loopy to me. Once I've got the goods, I'll make another note or change the entry, depending on the outcome. Wesley R. Elsberry 20:15, 27 February 2006 (PDT)

This page lists mammals known to echolocate as including the red-backed vole, the Norway rat, and several species of shrews. --Wesley R. Elsberry 04:43, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

- The figure for odontocete biosonar should be updated.

i created the original and still have the vector file, let me know of any modifications you would like and i can include them Emoscopes 12:56, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Consult Fig. 4 of my dissertation for a sagittal section diagram of the relevant anatomy for the bottlenose dolphin. The "dorsal bursae" are fatty bodies residing in each pair of phonic lips. The diagram shows a plane that passes through one side. The diagram for this Wiki article should show the level of the phonic lips, which is just where the spiracular cavity enters from below into the vestibular sacs. This is just about 2.5 cm below the blowhole. Wesley R. Elsberry 20:35, 27 February 2006 (PDT)

Are the "phonic lips" you refer to the same structure that I was taught as the "monkey-lips dorsal bursae" complex? Emoscopes ^Talk 15:54, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes. The "monkey-lips dorsal bursae" complex phrasing was due to Cranford, and he more recently has urged using "phonic lips dorsal bursae" complex to reflect what has been learned in recent experiments concerning sound production. Wesley R. Elsberry 17:52, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

The pointer for "incoming sound" should move back along the lower jaw. The region of highest sensitivity is about one-fifth to one-quarter the length of the lower jaw from the posterior-most point. The back end of the diagram for the dolphin skull looks weird; consult Fig. 1 of my dissertation (link above) for a photo of a lateral view of a dolphin skull. Wesley R. Elsberry 20:55, 27 February 2006 (PDT)

It isn't a dolphin skull per se, rather it is a generalised odontocete skull based on a number of sources. Emoscopes ^Talk 15:54, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Iv'e made the suggested corrections as you suggested as best as I can. Let me know if you would like anything else amended / elaborated. Emoscopes ^Talk 16:18, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] echo location and bats questions left unknown

Bat questions

Hi, I was at Carlsbad. I asked many questions, and thought to find the answers when I got home. Carlsbad ranger said that a bat ran into him in the dark, that bats sometimes use memorized patterns, not echo location to traverse caverns. A kid wisely said that echolocation uses energy. (and from submarine research - it gives the location of the bat away to any that can hear.)

I asked why bats used their eyes if echolocation can take care of everything from landing to food. I also asked if there are 400 bats, all echolocating, how do they know their echo? even if the cries are individual (and no one has done research that the ranger knew), get enough people together and all you hear is the roar of the crowd. Can mass bat formations jam their members echolocation?? On the shouting bats: they have their own cry blocked, but they can not block the cry of the bat next to them. So how come they are not deafened?

I have a few more questions, but I have to find my notes.

I got back to this months later: There was a device at Carlsbad. It was said to produce sound when it heard ultrasonic bat sounds. We had many bats coming out. The device chirped about a little less than once a second. The conclusion would be that not all bats use echolocation at all times.

Also can one bat or bat flock echo locate on the chirp of another bat or a bat in the flock? It might be do-able, and if so would explain the scarcity of cries. If there were 20 bats, and all needed to find something with echo-location, there should be many more than 20 cries per second. Instead, as I have said, an average of less than one cry per second.

If anyone wants to do research to verify or to expand on the above, please feel free. This question has been here for several months, and no one has responded. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.165.89.97 (talk) 03:26, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

John "Sean" J. Cleary III —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.87.244.47 (talk • contribs).

Hi,

Good questions - one thing I'm pretty sure of, though is that echolocating doesn't actually take much energy, because it is coupled to breathing, more specifically to expiration. So I don't think that would be the reason for abandoning it, and using a cognitive map of space while inside a cave. Maybe there are other reasons why using memory might be easier, though, like perhaps the interference from other bat calls that you mentioned.

--Dmc684 15:11, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi,

On detecting one's own echo: some bats appear to have individual vocal signatures. For example see figure 6 in "Variability in echolocation call design of 26 Swiss bat species: consequences, limits and options for automated field identification with a synergetic pattern recognition approach", available here.

Unrelatedly, we should discuss the echolocating megachiropteran bat, Egyptian_Rousette.

Roger wilco (talk) 17:02, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi sorry if this doesnt conform at all to wiki format. Just wanted to pose this question in case no ones ever thought of ir before. Dolphins seem to protect humans when a sharks around according to the shark and dolphin wiki entries. The shark wiki states that 'no sharks will attack a human when a dolphin is around. I'd like to raise the question of 'could it be because the dolphin somehow disrupts the sharks ability to detect electricity due to having bisonar?'

mark —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.107.3.6 (talk) 00:26, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Clicks vs. whistles

This was removed by an anonymous editor:

Toothed whale whistles do not appear to be used in echolocation.

The edit comment said that an encyclopedia entry and the San Diego Zoo said otherwise.

I think the original statement was perfectly accurate, and exactly this topic was the subject of my doctoral dissertation. I invite the anonymous editor to substantiate the claimed sources. I'll restore the statement later if that is not forthcoming. --Wesley R. Elsberry (talk) 15:15, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

What the San Diego Zoo site mentioned says on the topic:

Whales make lots of different kinds of sounds, including trills, whistles, moans, and squeals. Whistles seem to be used mainly for communicating with other whales. Single male humpback whales make their famous whale songs during the winter mating season.

and

Dolphins use clicking sounds for echolocation, and many use whistles to communicate with other members of their pod, or group. In addition to clicks and whistles, researchers have described dolphin sounds as screams, calls, moans, trills, grunts, squeaks, and even a “creaky door” sound. Bottlenose dolphin Tursiops truncatus researchers think that slow clicks and high-pitched whistles are signs of contentment, while harsh, low squawks express annoyance.

Not one statement there about whistles being used by odontocetes for echolocation. I'm betting the reference to an encyclopedia article is simply more confusion on the part of the anonymous editor.

I'll also note that every alternative description of sound in that second quote is how humans perceive dolphin click trains with varying parameters of inter-click interval. --Wesley R. Elsberry (talk) 18:46, 13 March 2008 (UTC)