The use of auditory evoked potentials has been promoted as a means by which to collect audiometric information from odontocete cetaceans that are rarely encountered in stranding situations. This article presents the results of auditory evoked potential hearing tests collected from stranded odontocetes over nearly a decade. For six species, no audiograms previously existed – the dwarf sperm whale ( Kogia sima ), pygmy sperm wha...

Auditory neuroscience in dolphins has largely focused on auditory brainstem responses; however, such measures reveal little about the cognitive processes dolphins employ during echolocation and acoustic communication. The few previous studies of mid- and long-latency auditory-evoked potentials (AEPs) in dolphins report different latencies, polarities, and magnitudes. These inconsistencies may be due to any number of difference...

Little research has been conducted on the somatosensory system of toothed whales and it remains uncertain how tactile sensitivity varies about their bodies. In this study, tactile sensitivity to high‐frequency (250‐Hz) displacement of the skin was quantified in three trained adult common bottlenose dolphins ( Tursiops truncatus ) using a vibratory device (tactor). The magnitude of skin displacement was controlled by varying th...

Auditory evoked potential (AEP) measurements are useful for describing the variability of hearing among individuals in marine mammal populations, an important consideration in terms of basic biology and the design of noise mitigation criteria. In this study, hearing thresholds were measured for 16 male California sea lions at frequencies ranging from 0.5 to 32 kH z using the auditory steady state‐response (ASSR), a frequency‐s...