Data from: Singing whales generate high levels of particle motion: implications for acoustic communication and hearing?

Acoustic signals are fundamental to animal communication, and cetaceans
are often considered bioacoustic specialists. Nearly all studies of their
acoustic communication focus on sound pressure measurements, overlooking
the particle motion components of their communication signals. Here we
characterized the levels of acoustic particle velocity (and pressure) of
song produced by humpback whales. We demonstrate that whales generate
acoustic fields that include significant particle velocity components that
are detectable over relatively long distances sufficient to play a role in
acoustic communication. We show that these signals attenuate predictably
in a manner similar to pressure and that direct particle velocity
measurements can provide bearings to singing whales. Whales could
potentially use such information to determine the distance of signalling
animals. Additionally, the vibratory nature of particle velocity may
stimulate bone conduction, a hearing modality found in other low-frequency
specialized mammals, offering a parsimonious mechanism of acoustic energy
transduction into the massive ossicles of whale ears. With substantial
concerns regarding the effects of increasing anthropogenic ocean noise and
major uncertainties surrounding mysticete hearing, these results highlight
both an unexplored pathway that may be available for whale acoustic
communication and the need to better understand the biological role of
acoustic particle motion.