Abstract
Whales and dolphins are majestic, elusive, charismatic creatures that couple exceptional grace with enormous power. These features may account for much of humanity’s enduring fascination with whales, but they are terrible reasons for studying their auditory systems. The principal reason whale ears are worth investigating is… Ginger Rogers. Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire were a famous dance team. Mr. Astaire was renowned for his grace and agility. What people rarely note is that Ms. Rogers not only matched her partner step for step, she did it wearing a cumbersome gown, in high heels, and backwards. Just as Ginger kept pace with Fred but in a different orientation and with added burdens, whales hear as well as land mammals but in a different medium with special acoustic burdens.
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Ketten, D.R. (2000). Cetacean Ears. In: Au, W.W.L., Fay, R.R., Popper, A.N. (eds) Hearing by Whales and Dolphins. Springer Handbook of Auditory Research, vol 12. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-1150-1_2
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