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Monday / October 14
HomeSpeciesAlaskan Beluga Whales Ace Hearing Exam

Alaskan Beluga Whales Ace Hearing Exam

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN:   Researchers tested the hearing of beluga whales in an Alaskan bay and found that they seem to have suffered little hearing loss due to ocean noise.

Beluga whales rely on a sharp sense of hearing to communicate, to navigate and to feed.  But the ocean is a noisy place. There’s commercial shipping, navy sonar, oil and gas extraction, pile driving, underwater explosions.

One way to tell if all that noise is affecting belugas: capture them for a routine physical. “So it’s kind of like going to the doctor’s office for them, but they’re also kind of abducted by aliens at the same time.”

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