Ring ring, goes the dinner bell. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Researchers studying animals living in the Barkley Canyon, a fascinating part of the ocean off Vancouver Island, Canada, found something interesting: northern elephant seals are responding to sonar pulses like Pavlov’s dogs.
“We suspect the seals have learned to associate sonar noise from the research instrument with the presence of food — a phenomenon known as the ‘dinner bell’ effect,” Héloïse Frouin-Mouy, lead study author from the University of Miami and the University of Victoria, said in a statement.
The sonar device is submerged in over 2,000 feet of water, and eight of the elephant seals in the area took special interest in it. The point of the experiment was to examine the effects of light and bait on deep-sea fish and invertebrate behaviors.
“The seals appeared to use this sound to locate an area with prey and may take advantage of fish disturbed by the camera lights,” Mouy continued, “particularly targeting sablefish, their preferred meal as seen in the video footage.”
Scientists named the seals Brian, Dennis, Carl, Mike, Al, David, Blondie, and Bruce after members of The Beach Boys.
“We became familiar with the mammals and ended up naming them in the paper after members of The Beach Boys to differentiate between the frequency of visits and observed habits,” Frouin-Mouy explained.
It wasn’t just the feeding behavior the researchers noticed, either — they also found the elephant seals to be engaging in acts unseen before, like taking power naps on the seafloor for over eight minutes at a time. They would lie completely motionless down there until they were forced to surface for air.
Barkley Canyon is a pretty amazing place. Deep sea vents pump out thermogenic gas, which attracts all manner of sea life.
