Mondo Knows Facts
Dolphins focus echolocation clicks using a fatty forehead organ
The dolphin melon acts as an acoustic lens for sonar beams.
Located in a dolphin forehead, the melon is a specialized lipid-filled organ that channels high-frequency clicks produced in nasal passages. By altering the lipid density across the organ, the dolphin focuses sound waves into a tight acoustic beam to scan underwater targets.
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Tags: dolphin, ocean, echolocation
Dolphins focus echolocation clicks using a fatty forehead organ: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- The dolphin melon acts as an acoustic lens for sonar beams. The figure is taken from Smithsonian Ocean, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
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- Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
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- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.