Sound Reception in Different Environments

Abstract

The aim of this book is to discuss “sensory ecology”, that is the adaptation of sense organs to the properties of the environments. For hearing organs, it is at present only possible to describe such a correlation for hearing in air and water. Some physical parameters are different in these two homogeneous media (see below), and the hearing organs are adapted to the medium in which they are being used (references to the literature on hearing in fish, seals and whales can be found in Schuijf and Hawkins, 1976;, Møhl and Ronald, 1975; and Payne and Webb, 1971). The vast majority of hearing animals, however, live in terrestrial environments, and very little is known about the acoustical properties of these environments.