Immerse yourself in the evolution of whale underwater hearing

Lecture by Mickael Mourlam, Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, Frankfurt (lecture language English).

Whales (Cetacea) form a clade of aquatic mammals that have lived for millions of years in an underwater world dominated by sound. Some use infrasound to communicate over ocean-wide distances, others specialize in listening to ultrasound in order to orient themselves by means of echolocation even in complete darkness.

But where does this acoustic diversity come from? How can these mammals hear so efficiently underwater? What are the evolutionary processes behind this?