Heffner Henry E, Heffner Rickye S
Department of Psychology, University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio 43606, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2018 Jan;143(1):500. doi: 10.1121/1.5021771.
Branstetter and his colleagues present the audiograms of eight killer whales and provide a comprehensive review of previous killer whale audiograms. In their paper, they say that the present authors have reported a relationship between size and high-frequency hearing but that echolocating cetaceans might be a special case. The purpose of these comments is to clarify that the relationship of a species' high-frequency hearing is not to its size (mass) but to its "functional interaural distance" (a measure of the availability of sound-localization cues). Moreover, it has previously been noted that echolocating animals, cetaceans as well as bats, have extended their high-frequency hearing somewhat beyond the frequencies used by comparable non-echolocators for passive localization.
布兰斯泰特及其同事展示了八头虎鲸的听力图，并对之前的虎鲸听力图进行了全面综述。在他们的论文中，他们提到本文作者曾报道过体型与高频听力之间的关系，但认为使用回声定位的鲸类可能是个特殊情况。这些评论的目的是澄清，一个物种的高频听力与其体型（质量）无关，而是与其“功能性双耳间距”（一种声音定位线索可用性的度量）有关。此外，此前已经有人指出，使用回声定位的动物，包括鲸类和蝙蝠，其高频听力范围有所扩展，超出了类似的非回声定位动物用于被动定位的频率范围。
