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POPSBook: Bats Sing, Mice Giggle more (at source): Among the recent discoveries outlined in their book, Bats Sing, Mice Giggle, is research that elephants are capable of detecting seismic vibrations through the bones in their feet and nerves in their trunks. By producing low frequency rumbles in their calls, elephants can communicate through the ground over hundreds of miles. Researchers studying bats have also found that certain bats produce songs as well as the chirps they use for echolocation and hunting. The false vampire bat, or Megaderma lyra, uses distinctive social calls that sound like songs when recorded and played back at a slower speed, to attract female mates while the sac-winged bat, Saccopteryx bilineata, uses songs to mark out its territory.
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POPSSongs From The Sea: Deciphering Dolphin Language With Picture Words Dr. Horace Dobbs, a leading authority on dolphin-assisted therapy, has joined the team as consultant. "I have long held the belief that the dolphin brain, comparable in size with our own, has specialized in processing auditory data in much the same way that the human brain has specialized in processing visual data. Nature tends not to evolve brain mass without a need, so we must ask ourselves what dolphins do with all that brain capacity. The answer appears to lie in the development of brain systems that require huge auditory processing power. There is growing evidence that dolphins can take a sonic 'snap shot' of an object and send it to other dolphins, using sound as the transmission medium. We an therefore hypothesize that the dolphin's primary method of communication is picture based. Thus, the picture-based imaging method, employed by Reid and Kassewitz, seems entirely plausible."
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POPSAnimal senses humans don't have You might think you're smart, but none of your senses rival the keenest abilities in the animal world. Animals see in the dark, sniff prey miles away, and detect electrical output from muscle twitches in hidden meals. Read on, so you don't become one of those meals.<<
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POPSThe Echoes of Flowers To detect plants, bats emit ultrasonic pulses and decipher the various echoes that return. A research group in Tübingen, Germany has developed a computer model to imitate this process of plant identification.
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POPSEvolution of Whales Ed Babinski works on the staff of the Duke Library at Furman University, Greenville, SC.The Evolution of Whales Based on November 2001 National Geographic Magazine, "The Evolution of Whales". Covering the Evolutionary Origins of Modern Whales and Dolphins. Reviewed, with some edits by Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, Dr. J.G.M. Thewissen, with additional comments by Edward T. Babinski, and revised text and art by Sharon Mooney. All images reconstructed from National Geographic, are public access, though source and appropriate credits must be left intact.
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