Dolphins are known mimics, able to make whale sounds because they’ve heard them before. Now a recent study suggest that they can do this even while asleep, and even though they were born in captivity, and therefore never met actually a whale. Researchers from the University of Rennes in France placed underwater microphones in a tank of performing dolphins at the Planète Sauvage dolphinarium to investigate the sounds they make at night, and recorded 25 sound they’d never heard before when the dolphins were thought to be sleeping, some of them very similar to whale songs. The guess is that they picked up the songs from a soundtrack used when they perform, indicating that they may be rehearsing their routines while asleep. Read tecca
Image courtesy of Cayusa, CC BY-NC 2.0
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