Skip to content
All articles
  • All articles
  • About whales & dolphins
  • Create healthy seas
  • End captivity
  • Fundraising
  • Green Whale
  • Prevent bycatch
  • Prevent deaths in nets
  • Stop whaling
MicrosoftTeams-image (9)

Double Your Impact for Marine Animal Rescue & Response

On a chilly day this past December, the WDC North America team celebrated the first...
20230126_091707

WDC’s Education Wishlist = Cleared!

To the WDC Community, I want to thank you so much for your support of...
Hysazu Photography

Looking forward for Southern Resident orcas in 2023

Hysazu Photography 2022 was a big year for Southern Resident orcas - 2022 brought the...
Credit: Seacoast Science Center

The Unlikely Adventure of Shoebert, a Young Grey Seal Who Visited an Industrial Park Pond

Credit: Seacoast Science Center In mid-September, our stranding partners in northern Massachusetts were inundated with...
Leaping harbour porpoise

The power of harbour porpoise poo

We know we need to save the whale to save the world. Now we are...
Right whale - Regina WDC

Whale and Dolphin Conservation: Change Through Policy.

WDC focuses on education, research, conservation projects, and policy work to create a sustainable future...
Clear the list graphic

Clear WDC’s Amazon Wishlist for Giving Tuesday

UPDATE: We are thrilled to report that everything was donated off of our Amazon Wishlist...
Fin whales are targeted by Icelandic whalers

Speaking truth to power – my week giving whales a voice

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting is where governments come together to make decisions about whaling...

Dolphin brains are more complex than initially thought

Hearing and seeing are largely thought to be two seperate senses. Dolphins however also use sound to see, a technique known as echolocation (see illustration below) where an individual dolphin sends out an acoustic signal (clicks etc.) and whatever it hits, or bounces off of sends back to the dolphin where it can then “see” what it is. New evidence from the study of two dolphin brains – acquired from animals who stranded over a decade ago – shows that this process is even more complex than was originally thought. 

Dolphins like to hang out in groups

In most mammalian species there is one area in the brain associated with hearing and one with vision. in dolphins however, by using a new technique called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI),  researchers have found that the processing of sound takes place in more than just one area as the auditory nerve connects to not only the temporal lobe – the area of the brain in most mammalian species where hearing is processed – but also to another area in the brain known as the primary visual region. 

This has led the authors to hypothesise that unlike the human brain for example, dolphins hear sound in more than just one place, likely because they use it for more than just hearing. Sound is the most important sense that dolphins have and they use it for not only exploring their environment but for communication, navigation and foraging.

Lead author Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory University, is excited by the similarities they found between the brain of dolphins and bats, also known to be experts at the use of echolocation, because although bats and dolphins are completely unrelated this research shows that they may have evolved similar mechanisms for using sound not just to hear, but to also create mental images. Berns considers that for the first time, we may be on the road to beginning to “really understand how the dolphins (and other animals) mind works and how they create perceptual experiences from their environment”.

dolphin echolocation