Interview Question 4
with Dr. Whit Au

4. How do you study echolocation?

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Question 4 transcript:
"You study echolocation in many different ways. First of all, one way is to work with captive animals and you do various kinds of echolocation tasks. One simple task might be, you might ask a question, 'how far can a dolphin detect a target?' And so, you begin to put a target in front of the dolphin, then you train the dolphin to respond, first by echolocating and then by touching a paddle, and you reward the animal. Then you take the target and you put it further away from the animal and you continue to do that until the animal says 'I can't see it or I can't detect the target.' That's a very simple way of studying echolocation. Another way of doing it is to do it in the field. When dolphins are forging for prey for instance you can measure their echolocation signals and try to get some simultaneous video or maybe some sonar echoes of the dolphin and the prey just to study how they use the echolocation. And so there are different ways, it really depends on how imaginative you are and how well you can instrument, or get the data that you want to get. But it's very difficult in the field."

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Interview Questions:
  1. How did you first become interested in science?
  2. What is the focus of your research and why did you choose this field of study?
  3. What have been some of the recent discoveries in echolocation by marine mammals?
  4. How do you study echolocation?
  5. What challenges have you faced in studying the echolocation of dolphins?
  6. What has most surprised you about the echolocating abilities of dolphins?
  7. What skills are important in your area of research?
  8. What are the opportunities in the studying echolocating abilities of dolphins? Can people without PhD's participate in some way in this type of research?
  9. What is the greatest impact/relevance of your research?
  10. What continues to inspire you about your work?
  11. What advice would you give a high school student who expressed an interest in pursuing a career in your field?

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