• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Do Dolphins’ Teeth Help Them Hear Underwater?

December 27, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

While the average person has 32 teeth, some species of dolphin possess as many as 240. Why so many? Not all species are quite so lucky – Risso’s dolphins only have four to 14 in their lower jaw. However, scientists have suspected dolphins’ teeth are for more than just munching for some time. Now, new research suggests it may have something to do with echolocation and may even help dolphins hear underwater.

A team of Japanese researchers investigated the structure and function of the tissues that surround the teeth of different species of dolphin, including bottlenose and striped dolphins, and compared them to those of other animals. The findings reveal a set of differences that set the dental structures of dolphins apart from those of other mammals. For example, the bone that holds the teeth (known as the alveolar bone) is spongier than those found in other animals. What’s more, the sockets holding the teeth in dolphins are unusually large and the teeth are looser. 

Advertisement

The researchers also found that dolphins possess a unique ligament structure – like other mammals, fibers in the inner layer spread out from the root of the tooth; however, unlike other mammals, fibers in the outer layer penetrate the spongy bone in a complex way. In between the two layers, there were thick bundles of long nerve fibers that are again unique to dolphins. Interestingly, some fibers end in structures that look like sensory receptors and allow electrochemical signals to travel through the fibers at a quicker pace. 

Taken together, these morphological features suggest dolphins’ teeth serve a sensory purpose, enabling the animals to detect changes in their environment – in a similar fashion to whiskers on a cat. Ryo Kodera from Tsurumi University in Japan told New Scientist the long fibers show “significant tooth mobility” and the thick nerve bundles indicate “heightened sensitivity to tooth movement.”  

While the findings do not conclusively say what sense these physiological differences might affect, Kodera suggests it could help dolphins hear better underwater. He told New Scientist, “Our findings support the hypothesis that dolphins utilize their teeth as part of an advanced sound reception system.”

Underwater hearing is not the only superpower dolphins possess – recent research suggests bottlenose dolphins have a “seventh sense” and can detect electrical currents better than platypuses (though not quite on the level of sharks and rays!). 

Advertisement

The study is published in the journal The Anatomical Record.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Nielsen CEO defends company amid escalating criticism from TV industry
  2. Operations observability platform Avenue launches with $4M
  3. How To Watch The “Ring Of Fire” Eclipse Across The United States This Month
  4. Elephant Calves Have Been Found Buried – What Does That Mean?

Source Link: Do Dolphins’ Teeth Help Them Hear Underwater?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • You Should Never Leave These Foods In Your Fridge Door (But We Bet You Do)
  • These Gullies On Mars Look Carved – We Might Finally Know What Created Them
  • Potential Environmental Trigger For Autism Identified, 3I/ATLAS’s Tail Appears To Have Changed Direction, And Much More This Week
  • Spaghetti Has Inner Secrets We’re Only Just Learning About
  • How Far Back In Time Could You Go And Still Understand English?
  • We Now Know How The First People Reached America – And It Wasn’t On Foot
  • Two Major Coral Species Now Functionally Extinct In Florida Keys, After Record-Breaking Marine Heatwave
  • A “Super-Earth” In The Habitable Zone Is Half The Distance To Comparable Worlds
  • Adorable But Critically Endangered Bornean Orangutan Born In Conservation Success
  • How Did The FDA Settle On The “2,000 Calories Per Day” Guideline?
  • Comet 3I/ATLAS Losing At Least Two Kangaroos’ Worth Of Dust Every Second
  • Mummified Dinosaur Duo Prove They Had Hooves, Marking “The First Confirmed Hooved Reptile”
  • What Do The Numbers On Your Toaster Really Mean?
  • NASA Vs. Elon Musk: Is A Moon Landing This Decade Off The Cards?
  • Scientists Explored Some Of The Deepest Parts Of The Ocean And Spotted Some Seriously Weird Deep-Sea Creatures
  • 500-Meter-Tall Megatsunami Struck Remote Alaskan Fjord After Massive Landslide
  • 3I/ATLAS, CKM Syndrome, And Mosquitoes’ Final Frontier
  • Male Humpback Dolphins Spotted Wearing Sea Sponge “Wigs” To Woo The Ladies
  • Can’t Sleep? The Military Sleep Trick That Helps You Fall Asleep in Just 2 Minutes
  • Why You Should Really, Really Not Eat Dolphin Meat
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version