2l6 WHALES 



developed and, in fact, rather large compared ^\•ith that of terrestrial 

 mammals. It normally has t^vo turns. 



All sorts of experiments on men and animals have shown that the 

 receptors sensitive to high tones are concentrated in the part of the 

 cochlea nearest the oval ^\■indo^\', while the receptors sensitive to low 

 tones are found in the part furthest from the windo^v. If, as we have good 

 reason to believe, Cetaceans can, indeed, hear very high tones, the high- 

 tone receptors ought to have a special structure. Because of the great 

 technical difficulties involved they have so far not been investigated 

 adequately, but even so, as early as 1908 a Viennese scholar, W. Kolmer, 

 Avho, while on a visit to the Zoological Station at St Andrew's (Scotland), 

 happened to come across a recently killed porpoise, managed to show that 

 a certain number of cells (the so-called supporting cells of Hensen and 

 Claudius) are strikingly big and strongly developed near the oval window. 

 Reysenbach de Haan not only confirmed these findings, but showed that 

 the same cells are very strongly developed in other mammals that are 

 similarly sensitive to high tones, i.e. in bats. He even classified the animals 

 (Cetaceans, bats, mice, cats and men) he had investigated according 

 to the size of these cells and found that it was proportional to the animal's 

 sensitivity to high tones. While we knoAv little about the exact function 

 of these cells, it seems clear, therefore, that they are connected in some 

 way with sensitivity to very high tones. 



From what has been said above, it is obvious that Cetaceans have a 

 very highly developed organ of hearing that is particularly sensitive to 

 very high tones. In Chapter 9 we shall discuss how the modifications 

 which produce this sensitivity have affected the structure of the auditory 

 nerve and of the auditory centres in the brain. 



I am devoting so much space to hearing in whales because this is, in 

 fact, their most important sense. We shall see later that vision plays only 

 a small, and smell hardly any, part in the whale's life, and that feeding, 

 direction-finding, judging the depth of water and mutual contact ai'e all 

 largely restricted to the ear. Moreover, greater knowledge of the whale's 

 auditory sense is of practical value as well. We have already seen that 

 these animals are set to flight by asdic and that this knowledge is being 

 used in modern whaling. Similarly, it is possible that they might be 

 attracted by special calls, just as birds and stags are. We have seen in 

 Chapter 6 that some Cetaceans are attracted over long distances by the 

 cry of one of their comrades in distress - sounds which we may learn to 

 imitate. Tomilin reported in 1955 that the Turks and the people of the 

 Black Sea coast near Batum attract Bottlenose Dolphins with special 

 whistles - a time-hallowed method already known to Pliny. It is also 

 possible that, since whales may find their krill through the (as yet 



