Nature & Environment

Dolphins may be maths geniuses

By T.K. Randall
July 23, 2012 ·  19 comments

Image Credit: (Flickr) Zest-pk Long considered to highly intelligent animals, it's no surprise that dolphins might be capable of utilizing a form of mathematics in their hunt for food. Study author Tim Leighton picked up on this after watching dolphins blowing tiny bubbles around prey as they hunted on an episode of the Discovery Channel's Blue Planet series.

By studying the type of echolocation pulses emitted by the dolphins and processing them using nonlinear mathematics it was possible to determine how the dolphins were achieving success - by using multiple sonar pulses that vary in amplitude. "So, provided the dolphin remembers what the ratios of the two pulses were, and can multiply the second echo by that and add the echoes together, it can make the fish 'visible' to its sonar," said Leighton.[!gad]Long considered to highly intelligent animals, it's no surprise that dolphins might be capable of utilizing a form of mathematics in their hunt for food. Study author Tim Leighton picked up on this after watching dolphins blowing tiny bubbles around prey as they hunted on an episode of the Discovery Channel's Blue Planet series.

By studying the type of echolocation pulses emitted by the dolphins and processing them using nonlinear mathematics it was possible to determine how the dolphins were achieving success - by using multiple sonar pulses that vary in amplitude. "So, provided the dolphin remembers what the ratios of the two pulses were, and can multiply the second echo by that and add the echoes together, it can make the fish 'visible' to its sonar," said Leighton.

Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation | Comments (19)

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