Killer Whales Use Sonar To Target Their Favourite Salmon
While it has been long know that killer whales or orcas off the coast of British Columbia and Washington State use sonar information to navigate, hunt, and communicate in murky waters, research has shown that killer whales also use natural sonar to select specific types of prey and thus land up getting more of their favourite food chinook salmon even where chinook are vastly outnumbered by other salmon species such as coho and sockeye.
To test this idea, Whitlow Au, a bio-acoustician at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, and his team used simulated echolocation clicks resembling those of wild killer whales to measure the echoes produced when the sound waves bounced off the bodies of three kinds of salmon. The team found that each salmon species has a unique echo pattern based on the different sizes and shapes of their swim bladde. [Via]
