Interview Question 3
with Dr. Darlene Ketten

3. What have been some of the recent discoveries about how marine mammals hear?

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Question 3 transcript:
"Recent discoveries are coming from all fields. From behavior, from work like mine, which is mostly modeling and anatomy, and from direct measurement just like we test humans and babies, we can ask the same questions. The most recent discoveries are how very wide the hearing range is across most whales and dolphins. For about twenty years we've known that dolphins can hear ten to twelve octaves. We hear eight octaves. An octave is a doubling of frequency, for instance, 300 Hz to 600 Hz is an octave. These animals hear from around 100 cycles per second up to almost 200,000 cycles per second and that is about ten octaves. We didn't know until very recently, looking at the ears for instance, that that is probably also true of the great whales, or the baleen whales."

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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 about how marine mammals hear?
  4. How do you study the hearing of marine mammals?
  5. What challenges have you faced in studying the hearing of marine mammals?
  6. What has most surprised you about the hearing of marine mammals?
  7. What skills are important in your area of research?
  8. What are the opportunities in studying the hearing of marine mammals? Can people without PhDs 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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