Animals
The Navy identifies the following animal species as having been used or studied by the program at various times:
Cetaceans:
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Pinnipeds:
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Other:
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Bottlenose Dolphins and California Sea Lions are the main animals used, and are kept at the base in San Diego. Dolphins have powerful biological sonar, unmatched by artificial sonar technology in detecting objects in the water column and on the sea floor. Sea lions lack this, but have very sensitive underwater directional hearing and exceptional vision in low-light conditions. Both of these species are trainable and capable of repetitive deep diving. As of the late 1990s, about 140 marine mammals were part of the program.
Read more about this topic: U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program
Famous quotes containing the word animals:
“The vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes other than those which are practiced by every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
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—Blake Edwards (b. 1922)
“The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how to apply them; Man, with his powers of reason, has reduced economics to the level of a farce which is at once funnier and more tragic than Tobacco Road.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)