Although whales are mammals that breathe air, they spend most of their time roaming the depths of the oceans. There, sound travels faster underwater and farther than it does on the world’s surface, at about 1500 meters per second compared to just 340 meters per second in air. So, a whale’s world is replete with sound — it’s a key element to its survival, touching everything from socializing and breeding to navigation and feeding.
But if whales don’t have any sign of external ears, how do whales hear sounds? Scientists use anatomical data, mathematical models, and behavioral experimental data to test echolocation and other hearing methods out in the wild.
Do Whales Hear Sound?
All whales rely heavily on sound to understand information about the world around them. Researchers at the Smithsonian Museum created detailed 3-D images of 56 whale fetuses from 15 different species of baleen and toothed whales from the museum’s specimen collection and compared and contrasted them with fossilized ears of extinct whales from millions of years back.
They discovered that both the oldest whale fossil ears and the youngest fetal ears share many features with land mammals — in fact, whale ears have been “acoustically isolated” for the past 45 million years or so, according to Nick Pyenson, the curator of fossil marine mammals at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
