Whales, You Might Want to Cover Your Ears

Yesterday, I developed a pretty bad ear infection.  I used to get them a lot when I was younger (I was a swimmer) but it’s been years since I have had one.  I managed to get in to see the doctor who checked me out and prescribed antibiotics and special ear drops.  By the time I got home I was unable to hear out of my infected ear, so I was eager to get some drops in there to start treating the infection.  While I waited for the drops to kick in, I was flipping through the New York Times where an article about hearing loss in whales caught my eye.

Sound can travel for hundreds of miles underwater before diminishing, which is amazing in and of itself (and something I never knew).  Sea mammals have extraordinary hearing which they use to make up for poor visibility in the water.   Using echolocation- emitting sounds and listening for the echo- sea mammals are able to convert those sounds into data which helps them find food, detect objects, and court mates.  However, according to the article by William J. Broad, loud noises underwater generated by ship engines, sonars, and other undersea activities are being linked to “deafness, tissue damage, mass strandings and disorientation in creatures that rely on hearing to navigate, find food and care for their young.”

There may be hope for these sea inhabitants, as researchers in Hawaii are discovering.  Based on their studies with a false killer whale named Kina, they believe that whales can effectively close up their ears internally achieving much the same result as people who plug their ears using their index fingers (just without the fingers since obviously whales don’t have them) .  This helps the whales to protect their ears from the noise.  The team led by Dr. Paul Nachtigall has been able to teach Kina to close her ears when she hears a signal, much like Pavlov taught his dogs to salivate when they heard a bell.  While they plan to test additional species before trying to apply their findings to the wild, they hope to be able to condition sea mammals to learn to avoid hearing loss and all of the dangers associated with it by covering their ears. 

And trust me, hearing loss, even temporarily, is no fun!