I'm looking forward to the results of T. Aran Mooney's summer research project. While many scientists (including Dr. Mooney) have looked into the effects of underwater sound on marine mammals, fish and cephalopods have gotten short shrift. Dr. Mooney suspects Loligo detect low frequency sound quite well, allowing them to sense boats and whales hunting them. This may also explain the historic clash between submarines and rudely awakened giant kraken.Dr. Mooney will not only look into how squid perceive underwater sound, he also plans to train them with sound aversions. Way to use your fellowship grant to write off all those Kenny G albums... Tweet
4 comments:
You know you've reached the 7th level of nerd-dom when you catch yourself "looking forward" to reading research results. The eighth level is reserved for dudes that wear awful hats and think they're being funny. :-)
David
Hey, great picture. I wrote the release, and it seems that Mooney's preliminary results do show that squid respond to low frequency sounds. It turns out that they don't respond to any one sound specifically, like a dolphin or whale, but a range of sounds large animals produce. How this relates to anthropogenic noise I'm sure he'll address in his paper. He'll be continuing this research at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute through the fall, so it may be another year until the "official" results.
David, those hats are handmade creations available on etsy. You could be that dude.
LOL. Keep up the good work, Kate. Long live blogfish.
David
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