• Privacy policy
  • T&C’s
  • About Us
    • FAQ
    • Meet the Team
  • Contact us
  • Guest Content
TLE ONLINE SHOP!
  • TLE
  • News
  • Politics
  • Opinion
    • Elevenses
  • Business
  • Food
  • Travel
  • Property
  • JOBS
  • All
    • All Entertainment
    • Film
    • Sport
    • Tech/Auto
    • Lifestyle
      • Horoscopes
    • Lottery Results
      • Lotto
      • Thunderball
      • Set For Life
      • EuroMillions
No Result
View All Result
The London Economic
SUPPORT THE LONDON ECONOMIC
NEWSLETTER
  • TLE
  • News
  • Politics
  • Opinion
    • Elevenses
  • Business
  • Food
  • Travel
  • Property
  • JOBS
  • All
    • All Entertainment
    • Film
    • Sport
    • Tech/Auto
    • Lifestyle
      • Horoscopes
    • Lottery Results
      • Lotto
      • Thunderball
      • Set For Life
      • EuroMillions
No Result
View All Result
The London Economic
No Result
View All Result
Home News Environment

Killer whales use sonic ‘flashlight’ to target prey hundreds of miles away

New research reveals how whales, dolphins and porpoises let out ultrasonic clicks in narrow beams to help them find food hiding in the murky depths

Guest Contributor by Guest Contributor
2018-11-15 16:31
in Environment, News, Science
FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmailWhatsapp

Killer whales use the sonic equivalent of a flashlight to target prey hundreds of miles away.

New research reveals how whales, dolphins and porpoises let out ultrasonic clicks in narrow beams to help them find food hiding in the murky depths.

Researchers said the sonar ability was honed over 32 million years of fierce evolutionary competition hunting deep and muddy water.

Their rapid “flashlight” ability was a careful trade-off between their long-range foraging and making sense of complex surroundings, their study revealed.

Echolocation was so useful at extreme depths that male Sperm Whales’ nose-like clickers grow to up 5m long – a third of their body length.

Blue whales meanwhile can produce uni-directional sounds with a range of hundreds of miles.

The evolutionary step could explain why the toothed-mammals became the top predators in a wide range of habitats – from shallow freshwater rivers to the great ocean deeps.

RelatedPosts

Noel Gallagher given £1k fine and six points over driving offence – even though he can’t even drive!

Piers Morgan comes out to bat for Phillip Schofield, saying he’s ‘not committed a crime’

Dozens of refugees ‘left on the streets’ in Westminster for two nights

WATCH: Jack Monroe says we’re in a ‘Cost of Conservatives’ crisis

The findings by teams from the University of St Andrews and the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Denmark were published in the journal Current Biology.

Study leader Dr Frants Havmand Jensen, of the University of St Andrews Scottish Oceans Institute, said: “This likely reflects an evolutionary pressure for long-range prey detection – it allowed larger whales to find prey further away, letting them hunt more efficiently in deep water.

“Focusing the sound energy in one direction also helps increase the range at which prey can be detected and thus could lead directly to higher foraging rates – provided the beam doesn’t get too narrow!”

His team looked at how toothed whales’ echolocation organs developed from when they were first evolved 32 million years ago.

They said the “pinnacle” of the ability was the sperm whale whose nose – which is used to generate the sonic blasts – grew up to a third of its length in adult males.

The research also found whales of all sizes consistently narrow bio-sonar beam to inspect their surroundings.

They likened it using a narrow-beam flashlight to search for food in the dark.

Co-author Professor Peter Teglberg Madsen, of Aarhus University in Denmark, added: “Normally, organs tend to grow proportionally to the rest of the body, but as echolocating whales became larger, their sound generating structures started taking up more and more of the body.”

By Berny Torre

Content Protection by DMCA.com

Since you are here

Since you are here, we wanted to ask for your help.

Journalism in Britain is under threat. The government is becoming increasingly authoritarian and our media is run by a handful of billionaires, most of whom reside overseas and all of them have strong political allegiances and financial motivations.

Our mission is to hold the powerful to account. It is vital that free media is allowed to exist to expose hypocrisy, corruption, wrongdoing and abuse of power. But we can't do it without you.

If you can afford to contribute a small donation to the site it will help us to continue our work in the best interests of the public. We only ask you to donate what you can afford, with an option to cancel your subscription at any point.

To donate or subscribe to The London Economic, click here.

The TLE shop is also now open, with all profits going to supporting our work.

The shop can be found here.

You can also SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER .

Subscribe to our Newsletter

View our  Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions

Trending on TLE

  • All
  • trending

Elevenses: The Thing About Wrexham’s Cinderella Story

Elevenses: Exposing the Tories’ Deepfake Illegal Immigration Bill

Elevenses: Rishi’s Finest Hour

More from TLE

Tax us more to spare the poor, millionaires beg Sunak

Life for ‘predatory paedophile’ care worker jailed for murdering schoolgirl Lucy McHugh to hide abuse

Lotto Results for Saturday 27 August 2022 Lottery Tonight’s winning numbers

Health passports could give people who test negative for Covid-19 “access all areas”

Tearful Dorries praises bravery of BBC journalists – a month after she pledged to cut their funding

Four in 10 Brits ‘obsess’ over calorie counting – but have no idea what else they might be consuming

Govt travel rules are just another xenophobic affront to our EU neighbours

Matt Hancock set to join I’m A Celebrity line-up in Australia

Heatwave sees roads start to melt

Elevenses: Left For Dead

About Us

TheLondonEconomic.com – Open, accessible and accountable news, sport, culture and lifestyle.

Read more

Contact

Editorial enquiries, please contact: [email protected]

Commercial enquiries, please contact: [email protected]

Address

The London Economic Newspaper Limited t/a TLE
Company number 09221879
International House,
24 Holborn Viaduct,
London EC1A 2BN,
United Kingdom

SUPPORT

We do not charge or put articles behind a paywall. If you can, please show your appreciation for our free content by donating whatever you think is fair to help keep TLE growing and support real, independent, investigative journalism.

DONATE & SUPPORT

© 2019 thelondoneconomic.com - TLE, International House, 24 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2BN. All Rights Reserved.




No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
  • Politics
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Entertainment
  • Lifestyle
  • Food
  • Travel
  • JOBS
  • More…
    • Elevenses
    • Opinion
    • Property
    • Tech & Auto
  • About Us
    • Meet the Team
    • Privacy policy
  • Contact us

© 2019 thelondoneconomic.com - TLE, International House, 24 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2BN. All Rights Reserved.