Sound localisation in crocodilians

Crocodilians, as other Archosaurs (including birds and dinosaurs), use sounds to communicate. To support acoustic communication, they have to analyse their acoustic environment and to localise all sound sources. Previous electrophysiological studies have suggested that crocodilians could benefit from interaural acoustic differences to localise sounds. However, this result has not been confirmed yet through a behavioural approach. Here, several studies have been conducted to explore sound localisation abilities in crocodilians: to identify the acoustic cues needed to localise sounds in space, to quantify their sound localisation abilities and to describe how they can benefit from the sources spatial separation to detect a sound embedded in noise. A behavioural study showed that trained crocodiles localise sounds with a great precision and can use both Interaural Time Differences (ITD) and Interaural Level Differences (ILD). Then, in the presence of noise in their environment, crocodilians perform spatial release from masking to increase the detection of a relevant acoustic signals. Altogether, theses studies showed high sound localisation abilities in crocodilians.