Scientists Capture Image Showing What Dolphins See With Echolocation

They released the images of “what the dolphin saw” that reveals that dolphin echolocation results in fairly detailed images. Jack Kassewitz, founder of the Speak Dolphin research organization, created a complicated process to replicate the reflected pulses of sound.

The image above shows a 2-D representation of the view a dolphin had of a trainer nearby in a tank – but the original data, captured with a device called a CymaScope, was printed in 3-D as well. Kassewitz’s latest research showed the dolphin’s echolocated impression of a submerged human. Given the recent findings, scientists tend to believe that dolphins actually use a more special form of language to communicate with each other and that is sono-pictorial. “When we discovered that dolphins not exposed to the echolocation experiment could identify objects from recorded dolphin sounds with 92 percent accuracy, we began to look for a way for to see what was in those sounds”.

During the research which took place at the Dolphin Discovery Center in Puerto Aventuras, Mexico, Kassewitz had colleague Jim McDonough submerge himself in front of the female dolphin “Amaya” in a research pool at the center. From there, researchers are able to convert those images to 3D, and create 3D-print, real-world models. The diver swam without any oxygen and held his breath to avoid any excess “noise” from bubbles.

As a result we can see that with the help of its echolocation sound sense, a dolphin can see the silhouette of an object and even observe some surface details.

“The ability of the CymaScope to capture what-the-dolphin-saw images relates to the quasi-holographic properties of sound and its relationship with water, which will be described in a forthcoming science paper on this subject”, Reid explained.

We were thrilled by the first successful print of a cube by the brilliant team at 3D Systems.

So far, it wasn’t clear how dolphins’ eyes work and how they perceive images or whether they see us or not, but now we have an image of a diver as seen by a dolphin.

As Amaya approached and directed echolocation beams towards the researcher, other members of the team used high specification audio equipment in order to capture the signal. He added that the dolphin has had around fifty million years to evolve its echolocation sense, whereas marine biologists have studied the physiology of cetaceans for only around five decades.