Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) echoic angular discrimination: effects of object separation and complexity

J Acoust Soc Am. 2007 Jan;121(1):626-35. doi: 10.1121/1.2400664.

Abstract

A bottlenose dolphin was tested on its ability to echoically discriminate horizontal angular differences between arrays of vertically oriented air-filled PVC rods. The blindfolded dolphin was required to station in a submerged hoop 2 radial m from the stimuli and indicate if an array with two rods (S+) was to the right or the left of a single rod (S-). The angular separation between the two rods (thetaw) was held constant within each experiment while the angle between the S+ and the S-stimuli (thetab) varied to produce angular differences (deltatheta= thetab-thetaw) ranging from 0.25 to 4 degrees. In experiment I, thetaw was maintained at 2 degrees and in experiment II, thetaw was maintained at 4 degrees. Resulting 75% correct thresholds (method of constant stimuli) were 1.5 and 0.7 degrees, respectively. The two main findings of this study are: (1) decreasing the number of targets does not aid in localization, and (2) increasing the space between the rods enhances localization. Taken as a whole, the experiments suggest dolphins have a well-developed ability to resolve spatial information through sonar.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Acoustics*
  • Animals
  • Auditory Perception / physiology*
  • Bottle-Nosed Dolphin / physiology*
  • Discrimination Learning / physiology
  • Echolocation / physiology*
  • Environment
  • Male
  • Models, Biological
  • Orientation / physiology
  • Space Perception / physiology*