The Dolphin Sonar: Excellent Capabilities In Spite of Some Mediocre Properties

Dolphin sonar research has been conducted for several decades and much has been learned about the capabilities of echolocating dolphins to detect, discriminate and recognize underwater targets. The results of these research projects suggest that dolphins possess the most sophisticated of all sonar for short ranges and shallow water where reverberation and clutter echoes are high. The critical feature of the dolphin sonar is the capability of discriminating and recognizing complex targets in a highly reverberant and noisy environment. The dolphin’s detection threshold in reverberation occurs at a echo‐to reverberation ratio of approximately 4 dB. Echolocating dolphins also have the capability to make fine discriminate of target properties such as wall thickness difference of water‐filled cylinders and material differences in metallic plates. The high‐resolution property of the animal’s echolocation signals and the high dynamic range of its auditory system are important factors in their outstanding discrimination capabilities. In the wall thickness discrimination of cylinder experiment, time differences between echo highlights at small as 500–600 ns can be resolved by echolocating dolphins. Measurements of the targets used in the metallic plate composition experiment suggest that dolphins attended to echo components that were 20–30 dB below the maximum level for a specific target. It is interesting to realize that some of the properties of the dolphin sonar system are fairly mediocre, yet the total performance of the system is often outstanding. When compared to some technological sonar, the energy content of the dolphin sonar signal is not very high, the transmission and receiving beamwidths are fairly large, and the auditory filters are not very narrow. Yet the dolphin sonar has demonstrated excellent capabilities in spite the mediocre features of its “hardware.” Reasons why dolphins can perform complex sonar task will be discussed in light of the “equipment” they possess.