Harbor seals, like many animals, determine the direction from which a sound is coming by sensing the difference in arrival times at their two ears. A small difference in arrival times means that the object is in front of the seal; a larger difference means it is to the left or right. There is a minimum time difference that a seal can sense, and this leads to a limitation on a seal's direction sense. Seals can distinguish between two sounds that come from directions 3° apart in air, but this increases to 9° in water. Explain why you would expect a seal's directional discrimination to be worse in water than in air.

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Physics

Grady Kelly

25 July, 01:20

Harbor seals, like many animals, determine the direction from which a sound is coming by sensing the difference in arrival times at their two ears. A small difference in arrival times means that the object is in front of the seal; a larger difference means it is to the left or right. There is a minimum time difference that a seal can sense, and this leads to a limitation on a seal's direction sense. Seals can distinguish between two sounds that come from directions 3° apart in air, but this increases to 9° in water. Explain why you would expect a seal's directional discrimination to be worse in water than in air.

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Camille Key · Answer 1

Bearing in mind that sound waves propagate more quickly in an environment whose state is liquid than in an environment whose state is solid, the difference that the sound will reach in the ears of the seal will be less and there may be a minimum time difference that the seal can detect. Thus, because the speed of the sound wave is faster in water, directional discrimination is worse than in air.