Masked hearing thresholds of a beluga whale ( Delphinapterus leucas) in icebreaker noise
An experiment is presented that measured masked hearing thresholds of a beluga whale at the Vancouver Aquarium. The masked signal was a typical beluga vocalization; the masking noise included two types of icebreaker noise and naturally occurring icecracking noise. Thresholds were measured behavioral...
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Published in | Deep-sea research. Part II, Topical studies in oceanography Vol. 45; no. 7; pp. 1373 - 1388 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Elsevier Ltd
01.01.1998
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | An experiment is presented that measured masked hearing thresholds of a beluga whale at the Vancouver Aquarium. The masked signal was a typical beluga vocalization; the masking noise included two types of icebreaker noise and naturally occurring icecracking noise. Thresholds were measured behaviorally in a go/no-go paradigm. Results were that bubbler system noise exhibited the strongest masking effect with a critical noise-to-signal ratio of 15.4
dB. Propeller cavitation noise completely masked the vocalization for noise-to-signal ratios greater than 18.0
dB. Natural icecracking noise showed the least interference with a threshold at 29.0
dB. A psychophysical analysis indicated that the whale did not have a consistent decision bias. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0967-0645 1879-0100 |
DOI: | 10.1016/S0967-0645(98)00027-7 |