Amazon river dolphin
Amazonian rivers are often very murky, and the Amazon river dolphin is therefore likely to depend much more on its sense of echolocation than vision when navigating and finding prey. However, echolocation in shallow waters and flooded forests may result in many echoes to keep track of. For each click produced a multitude of echoes are likely to return to the echolocating animal almost on top of each other which makes object discrimination difficult. This may be why the Amazon river dolphin produces less powerful clicks compared to other similar sized toothed whales. By sending out clicks of lower amplitude only nearby objects will cast back detectable echoes, and hence fewer echoes need to be sorted out, but the cost is a reduced biosonar range. Toothed whales generally do not produce a new echolocation click until all relevant echoes from the previous click have been received, so if detectable echoes are only reflected back from nearby objects, the echoes will quickly return, and the Amazon river dolphin is then able to click at a high rate. This in turn allow these animals to have a high acoustic update rate on their surroundings which may aid prey tracking when echolocating in shallow rivers and flooded forests with plenty of hiding places for the prey. While preying in murky water, they emit series of clicking noises, 30 to 80 per second, which they use by listening to the bouncing sonar which bounces off their prey.