Last month we learned that whales are able to "block their ears" to cope with loud noises. While whales probably aren't stuffing kelp in their ears whenever a cruise ship plows by (science fact: toothed whales actually do a lot of their hearing through the pan bone, a fat filled window in their jaw), researchers are still in the dark as to the exact mechanisms of this acoustic alleviation.
On a side note, I had the privilege of meeting Kina the false killer whale (the subject of this research) while spending a semester at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. You might have heard of his famous wholphin roommate Kekaimalu.
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| Kina the false killer whale. (Photo A. Paradise) |
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| My professor using an acoustic device to test Kina's hearing. (Photo A. Paradise) |
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