Singing whales generate high levels of particle motion: implications for acoustic communication and hearing?
Acoustic signals are fundamental to animal communication, and cetaceans are often considered bioacoustic specialists. Nearly all studies of their acoustic communication focus on sound pressure measurements, overlooking the particle motion components of their communication signals. Here we characterized the levels of acoustic particle velocity (and pressure) of song produced by humpback whales. We demonstrate that whales generate acoustic fields that include significant particle velocity components that are detectable over relatively long distances sufficient to play a role in acoustic communication. We show that these signals attenuate predictably in a manner similar to pressure and that direct particle velocity measurements can provide bearings to singing whales. Whales could potentially use such information to determine the distance of signalling animals. Additionally, the vibratory nature of particle velocity may stimulate bone conduction, a hearing modality found in other low-frequency specialized mammals, offering a parsimonious mechanism of acoustic energy transduction into the massive ossicles of whale ears. With substantial concerns regarding the effects of increasing anthropogenic ocean noise and major uncertainties surrounding mysticete hearing, these results highlight both an unexplored pathway that may be available for whale acoustic communication and the need to better understand the biological role of acoustic particle motion.
Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 266 Woods Hole Road, Woods Hole, MA, USA amooney@whoi.edu.
T Aran
0000-0002-5098-3354
TA
Mooney
Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 266 Woods Hole Road, Woods Hole, MA, USA.
Maxwell B
MB
Kaplan
Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, 46-007 Lilipuna Road, Kaneohe, HI, USA.|Oceanwide Science Institute, PO Box 61692, Honolulu, HI, USA.
Marc O
MO
Lammers
D000162:Acoustics; D000818:Animals; D006309:Hearing; D050640:Humpback Whale / Q000502:physiology*; D014828:Vocalization, Animal / Q000502:physiology*
acoustic communication; bioacoustics; cetacean; hearing; noise; soundscape