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What Do Whales and Dolphins Hear?

Format
Data Visualization
Medium
D3.js, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, R, MySQL
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Description

Whales and dolphins, collectively referred to as cetaceans, are a group of mammals that are beloved across the globe, as seen by the numerous international regulations intended to protect the group from harm. That harm can be physical, for example from a ship striking the animal, but it can also come from an acoustic source which could be loud and disorienting for the animal. In order to prevent acoustic trauma to cetacean species, one must know what sounds are audible to the species.

This article collects and presents the data that show which frequencies cetacean species are measured or estimated to hear at. It was a project of passion, incorporating my love of data visualization into my own field of hearing research. It is written for a general audience and contains most of the published data for measured and estimated audiograms, at least up until the time of writing.

My contributions to the data include the estimated audiograms for the minke whale, and later, for the humpback whale.

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