SUMMARY

Toothed whales (Odontoceti, Cetacea) navigate and locate prey by means of active echolocation. Studies on captive animals have accumulated a large body of knowledge concerning the production, reception and processing of sound in odontocete biosonars, but there is little information about the properties and use of biosonar clicks of free-ranging animals in offshore habitats. This study presents the first source parameter estimates of biosonar clicks from two free-ranging oceanic delphinids, the opportunistically foraging Pseudorca crassidens and the cephalopod eating Grampus griseus. Pseudorca produces short duration (30 μs), broadband (Q=2–3) signals with peak frequencies around 40 kHz, centroid frequencies of 30–70 kHz, and source levels between 201–225 dB re. 1 μPa (peak to peak, pp). Grampus also produces short (40 μs), broadband (Q=2–3) signals with peak frequencies around 50 kHz, centroid frequencies of 60–90 kHz, and source levels between 202 and 222 dB re. 1 μPa (pp). On-axis clicks from both species had centroid frequencies in the frequency range of most sensitive hearing, and lower peak frequencies and higher source levels than reported from captive animals. It is demonstrated that sound production in these two free-ranging echolocators is dynamic, and that free-ranging animals may not always employ biosonar signals comparable to the extreme signal properties reported from captive animals in long-range detection tasks. Similarities in source parameters suggest that evolutionary factors other than prey type determine the properties of biosonar signals of the two species. Modelling shows that interspecific detection ranges of prey types differ from 80 to 300 m for Grampus and Pseudorca, respectively.