00:00At first glance, you may not know what this is.
00:05After all, it does look quite a lot like a bird's skull.
00:08Well, what we've got here is actually the skull of a dolphin, and the reason why it
00:12looks so weird is because it's missing that characteristic hump on the front of its head.
00:18That is the melon organ.
00:21The melon organ is a ball of fatty tissue and is part of a whole system of bizarre organs
00:27that allow dolphins to both create and understand sound.
00:32We look down here, we can see the nostrils that would come up out of the top of the head,
00:37and there would be a pair of muscular lips here called the phonic lips that, when pursed
00:42together, would allow the dolphin to make squeaking noises, like when you fill up a
00:48balloon and then pull the end tight shut and let the air out, it squeaks.
00:59Dolphins can use these squeaky sounds, known as whistles, to communicate, but they also
01:05make these curious clicking noises, which are used for an amazing sixth sense, echolocation,
01:13and this is where that melon organ comes into play.
01:21Echolocation is an incredible tool used for both hunting and navigating, and it works
01:27a bit like sonar on a submarine, allowing dolphins to detect the location of animals
01:33and other objects in the water.
01:35It's so precise that dolphins can interpret not just where something is, but also its
01:40size, speed, and direction of travel.
01:43But how do they do it?
01:50Here inside the dolphin's head, we have the phonic lips that make those clicks.
01:55Normally, sound would travel out in every direction, but as the sound waves pass through
02:02the melon organ, it focuses them into a narrow beam.
02:07When this beam reaches an object in the water, some sound then echoes back towards the dolphin,
02:13whose brain can interpret the reflected sound waves into information about the 3D world
02:18around it.
02:22This extraordinary skill means that dolphins can hunt in the murkiest of waters, and even
02:27in the dark, all down to that amazing head.
02:32Now that's using your melon.
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