We make lots of joke about our bodily secretions , but they ’re all there for a reasonableness . tear rinse our eyes , sweat helps keep us cool , and weewee rids our bodies of waste . The types of fluids produce vary by coinage , as do their functions . dolphinfish snob , for exemplar , may be a necessary part of echolocation . Acoustic researchers are represent their employment on this concept at theannual meetingof the Acoustical Society of America this week in Salt Lake City .
dolphinfish interference - qualification is fantastically sophisticated . Over the last half - century , we ’ve instruct that the clicks , whistles , and whine they produce help themtrack move preyand communicate with one another . But just how they ’re making these randomness remains unknown .
" It ’s harder than you might think to make loud , high-pitched frequency vocalise , " Aaron Thode , a research scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego , saidin a printing press statement . Want to render it for yourself ? Here ’s a sample . See if you’re able to replicate it . We ’ll wait .
How ’d you do ? Not very well , we ’re guessing . But do n’t beat yourself up about it — you do n’t have the anatomy for it . dolphin ' nasal passage are just under their blowhole . Inside those passage are lump of flesh called bursae . scientist trust that vibrating the bursa at gamey speed can make those shrieks and dog potential .
Still , they do n’t know for trusted . As you might opine , it ’s very hard to get a video of a dolphin vibrating its Brusa . So Thode and his father , retired physicist Lester Thode , developed a reckoner model to revivify the buzzy bursae experience .
Dolphin click have two piece : a clump , followed by a sound reflection , like that of a Alexander Graham Bell . The Thodes built a good example that would regurgitate both the clunk and the doughnut , then compared the feign sound with real dolphin noises recorded at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology and the Navy Marine Mammal Program . The simulator take hold up , successfully reproducing the timing , frequence , and overall sound of clicks from flesh - and - blood dolphins .
Through manipulation of their virtual dolphin strait political machine , the researchers incur that the bursae produce clicks by pulling apart , then snapping together . But this reaching - and - snap action would be difficult to manage without , as they write in their presentation abstract , “ some slight adhesion . ” They believe the most likely source of that adherence is mucous secretion .
More enquiry will postulate to be done to corroborate the prig theory . This work was done on calculator , with one specific model . “ Others could make a different model that also matches the data , ” Lester Thode noted . There are no known plans to try the model with real dolphin boogers .
