Japanese scientists invent "Dolphin-Speaker"
It is always a doubt that dolphins are saying something to one another with all their clicks, squeals and whistles. Scientists are still not sure that what exactly they are communicating. They may be getting closer to figure it out.
However, Japanese Scientists have created an underwater speaker that would be capable of playing back the creature’s entire acoustic range.
According to reports, the device was created by a team from the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology. The device can reproduce not only the dolphin’s low frequency sound 20 KHz, which can be heard by humans, but also their high-frequency sounds that a human can’t hear. It goes up to 150 KHz.
Tokyo University grad student, Yuka Mishima said, “Acoustic studies of dolphins that have been done so far focus mainly on recordings of vocalizations and hearing abilities, but relatively few playback experiments have been conductedâ€.
“There were no speakers that could project from low to high frequencies like dolphins, although some could project the low-frequency sounds or parts of dolphin soundsâ€, he added.
The speaker incorporates “new types of piezoelectric elements that had never been used for underwater acoustic transducersâ€. Yuka Mishima says, they now plan on using the device to play back recorded dolphin sounds, to observe the reactions of real dolphins.
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