title: Auditory Sensitivity and Masking Profiles for the Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris).
abstract: Sea otters are threatened marine mammals that may be negatively impacted by human-generated coastal noise, yet information about sound reception in this species is surprisingly scarce. We investigated amphibious hearing in sea otters by obtaining the first measurements of absolute sensitivity and critical masking ratios. Auditory thresholds were measured in air and underwater from 0.125 to 40 kHz. Critical ratios derived from aerial masked thresholds from 0.25 to 22.6 kHz were also obtained. These data indicate that although sea otters can detect underwater sounds, their hearing appears to be primarily air adapted and not specialized for detecting signals in background noise.
authors.affiliation: Long Marine Laboratory, Institute of Marine Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, 100 Shaffer Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060, USA. asila@ucsc.edu.
authors.forename: Asila
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ghoul
authors.affiliation: Long Marine Laboratory, Institute of Marine Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, 100 Shaffer Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060, USA. coll@ucsc.edu.
authors.forename: Colleen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Reichmuth
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics; D000818:Animals; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology*; D006309:Hearing / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D010041:Otters / Q000502:physiology*; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Audiogram; Hearing; Masking; Noise; Sea otter