The contact point between the minke whale ear fat and the tympanoperiotic complex is similar to the area of contact between odontocete acoustic fats and their tympanoperiotic complex.
Similar to odontocetes, the minke whale ear canal is narrow, winding, and most likely a vestigial part of the auditory system.
Although the odontocete acoustic fats contact a larger surface area of the tympanoperiotic complex, the minke whale ear fats taper to insert into the "triangular opening" (Mead and Fordyce, 2009) of the tympanoperiotic complex.
While the researchers could not pinpoint exactly how the sound energy injured the whales' ears or tissues, the acoustic assault appears to have left some dazed and confused, causing them to swim ashore or become vulnerable to shark attack.
Yet it's been difficult to devise regulations governing this noise, because scientists have not fully understood how sounds reach the baleen whales' ear bones.
Balcomb told the Los Angeles Times, "sonar waves at certain frequencies might have resonated around the whale's ears, causing tissues to tear much as a wineglass will shatter at a particular pitch".
By 35 million to 40 million years ago, the basilosauroid whales had ears that were essentially like those of modern toothed whales.
That the waxy plug in a whale's ear might work as a sound lens focusing song from miles away.
In addition to bleeding around the whales' brains and ears, scientists found lesions in their livers, lungs and kidneys, as well as nitrogen bubbles in their organs and tissue, all classic symptoms of a sickness that scientists had naturally assumed whales would be immune to: the bends.
The internal structures of the whole minke whale head and extracted ears were reconstructed using three-dimensional visualization software AMIRA® v.5.2.2.
