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Hearing In Dolphins (May 28, 2004, One)

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Program Summary

Did you hear that? Maybe it was the dog next door voicing her displeasure at the mailman. Or maybe it was your own dinging doorbell, or the radio, or birds singing cheerfully just outside the window. Whatever the source of the sound, the way we hear it is the same. Things such as vocal chords, radio waves, or twittering birds vibrate the air and those vibrations, or sound waves, make their way into your ears, waggle a few tiny bones and hairs, and send a few nerves into action translating the whole thing into sound. Our ears are amazing sound catchers, but are all ears the same?

This week in New York, the Acoustical Society of America held its annual meeting presenting a wide array of sound-related topics. Scientist Darlene Ketten joined Ira to discuss new research into how marine mammals such as dolphins hear. With ear openings about the size of chopstick points, how is it that dolphins are the best listeners in the animal kingdom? What and how do dolphins hear? And what could they possibly have in common with bats? Listen in and find out.

Guests

Darlene Ketten, senior scientists of biology at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts

Related Links and Resources

HowStuffWorks: How Bats Work: Seeing with Sound
HowStuffWorks: How Hearing Works
“Science Friday,” June 26, 1998: Underwater Acoustics
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Center

For Discussion:

• What is sound?
• How do human ears work?
• How do dolphins hear sounds?
• How do dolphins use their hearing, and how is this similar to how humans use theirs?
• How does dolphin hearing compare to that of bats?
• If dolphins and bats had hearing like humans, how would they survive in their environment?

Activities

Listen up! For general information, activities, and lesson plans that illustrate properties of sound and demonstrate how people hear check out the teacher resource page at Neuroscience for Kids: The Senses. The Newton’s Apple Teacher’s Guide to Hearing has a few great lesson plans that challenge kids to explore hearing on their own as they listen and identify sounds without looking.

Huh? The science and nature of sound and sound waves is explored in The Phenomenon of Sound from Discoveryschool.com. Students see how sound waves travel through different mediums—solids, liquids and gases—as they observe a variety of sound waves.

Big splash. For a handful of interesting quick facts about dolphins, take a look at Animal Bytes from the San Diego Zoo. Here you can find easily accessible information and images as well as dolphin sounds. You can also hear a variety of sounds made by several species of dolphin and whale at the aptly named Sounds of Whales and Dolphins.

A whale of a song. Can You Hear a Whale? from National Geographic Society’s Xpedition Lesson Plans allows students to listen to whale vocalizations and introduces them to the concepts of echolocation, communication, and how humans gather and analyze these vocalizations.

Holy echo, Batman! Though designed for younger students, Scholastic’s Magic Schoolbus Going Batty activity is a fun and engaging echolocation game that demonstrates how some animals “see” with sound. A similar activity (without the bus) is Whale Echolocation from the Educator’s Reference Desk.

Use the search box below to perform a Google search within any of the specifc sites or general domains mentioned in this Activities section.

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