SCIENCE

In a scientific first, researchers have reproduced what a dolphin saw and heard as it encountered a human diver. (Discovery News)

Use our resources to better understand the secret language of dolphins.

Teachers, scroll down for a quick list of key resources in our Teachers’ Toolkit.

Discussion Ideas

• The startling new image depicts what dolphins “see” as they use echolocation. What is echolocation?
  • Echolocation is “biological sonar.” It describes the ability of some animals to emit high-pitched sounds and determine an object’s distance and shape by the time it takes those sounds to echo, or bounce back to them. Learn more about dolphin echolocation in this fun edition of Camp Google—which includes a great, hands-on activity.
    • Unlike people, dolphins don’t have vocal cords. The high-pitched sounds they use for echolocation are made as air moves through their nasal passages (blowhole). Dolphin sounds are often characterized as clicks, squeaks, creaks, and buzzing clicks. Click here to listen to a pod of dolphins vocalizing. (Skip to about :45 to start to hear the dolphins.)

• Dolphins use sound to “see”? Don’t they have eyes?
  • Yes, and they use those eyes to see. Echolocation is an additional form sensory perception that comes in especially handy when dolphins are navigating the pitch-black ocean depths—or they’re blindfolded. Learn more about dolphins’ amazing echolocation abilities here.

• What do dolphins use echolocation for?
  • According to SeaWorld, “dolphins rely heavily on sound production and reception to navigate, communicate, hunt, and avoid predators in dark or limited vision waters.”

• In the experiment that captured a dolphin’s-eye-view of a diver, the diver didn’t use scuba gear. Why not?
  • The bubbles from a breathing apparatus might interfere with the image.

• What aspect of the dolphin’s-eye-view image surprised researchers?
  • Researchers expected to see an echolocation image of the diver’s face, but instead got “what appears to be the fuzzy silhouette of almost a full man. No face.” It turns out the dolphin, a female named Amaya, had been using echolocation to track the (male) diver for a while before the diver was aware and his face was close enough to take up her entire field of echolocation “vision.”

TEACHERS’ TOOLKIT

Discovery News: Image Shows How Dolphins See People

Nat Geo: Secret Language of Dolphins

Camp Google: See with Your Ears

SpeakDolphin.com: Researchers at Speakdolphin.com Create First 3D Print of a Human Being Using Dolphin Echolocation – “What a Dolphin Saw!”