Publication Date:
2001-07-07
Description:
Marine mammals often forage in dark or turbid waters. Whereas dolphins use echolocation under such conditions, pinnipeds apparently lack this sensory ability. For seals hunting in the dark, one source of sensory information may consist of fish-generated water movements, which seals can detect with their highly sensitive whiskers. Water movements in the wake of fishes persist for several minutes. Here we show that blindfolded seals can use their whiskers to detect and accurately follow hydrodynamic trails generated by a miniature submarine. This shows that hydrodynamic information can be used for long-distance prey location.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Dehnhardt, G -- Mauck, B -- Hanke, W -- Bleckmann, H -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2001 Jul 6;293(5527):102-4.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Institut fur Zoologie, Universitat Bonn, Poppelsdorfer Schloss, D-53115 Bonn, Germany. dehnhardt@neurobiologie.ruhr-uni-bochum.de〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11441183" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Acoustics
;
Animals
;
Cues
;
Fishes/physiology
;
Probability
;
Seals, Earless/*physiology
;
Swimming
;
Time Factors
;
Vibrissae/*physiology
;
Video Recording
;
*Water Movements
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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