Enlarge / “I spy with my dolphin eye… one thing that appears like prey!” (credit score: Ridgway et al., 2022, PLOS ONE/CC-BY 4.0)
There’s not often time to jot down about each cool science-y story that comes our means. So this yr, we’re as soon as once more working a particular Twelve Days of Christmas sequence of posts, highlighting one science story that fell by means of the cracks in 2022, every day from December 25 by means of January 5. At present: Scientists connected video cameras onto dolphins to seize the sights and sounds of the animals as they hunted for prey to be taught extra about their feeding conduct.
Scientists connected GoPro cameras to 6 dolphins and captured the sights and sounds of the animals as they hunted and devoured varied species of fish—even squealing in victory on the seize of child sea snakes, in keeping with an August paper printed within the journal PLoS ONE. Whereas sound and video has beforehand been recorded for dolphins discovering and consuming lifeless fish, per the authors, that is the primary footage combining sound and video from the dolphins’ perspective as they pursued reside prey whereas freely swimming. The audio ingredient enabled the scientists to be taught extra about how the dolphins communicated whereas searching.
Sam Ridgway and his colleagues on the Nationwide Marine Basis in San Diego, California, have performed earlier analysis on dolphins. They thought they may be taught much more concerning the animals’ searching and feeding methods utilizing cheap industrial GoPro cameras to report sounds in addition to visuals. The excessive frames per second (60, 90, or 120 FPS) enabled them to watch adjustments in conduct body by body.
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