Indohyus looked like a mouse-deer or a large racoon, but had the ears of a whale—and its fossil was found high up in the Himalayas.

Although whales are mammals that breathe air, they spend most of their time roaming the depths of the oceans. There, sound ...

In the first hearing test of live baleen whales, the animals detected much higher frequency sounds than expected, forcing ...

Deep-diving toothed whales wash up dead with stomachs full of plastic and prey alike. Their built-in sonar likely can’t tell ...

and in an extreme form in modern whales. The ear region of its skull is more specialized for underwater hearing. And its legs are disengaged from its pelvis, symbolizing the severance of the ...

Now, scientists have discovered that whales can decrease the sensitivity of their hearing to protect their ears from loud noise. Humans tend to do this with index fingers; scientists haven’t ...

And whale ears grew ever more sensitive to underwater sound, aided by pads of fat that ran in channels the length of their jaws, gathering vibrations like underwater antennae and funneling them to ...