How Does Noise Impact Animals?

A team at Florida's Dolphin Research Centre watched as pairs of dolphins were tasked with pressing buttons in their lagoon. To do this, the animals had to talk to each other underwater to coordinate their button pushes. The team recorded the vocalisations they produced to see how the animals responded as their task was made increasingly more difficult by playing noises underwater from a speaker. They upped their game, shouting to overcome the din and turning to face each other underwater, but their success rates still dropped significantly when doing so.