7 ms·

Image Shows a Dolphin's Echolocated Impression of a Submerged Human

60 points by eric_h 11y ago

dang 11y ago
Url changed from http://gizmodo.com/unprecedented-image-shows-a-dolphins-echolocated-impres-1746714755 http://gizmodo.com/unprecedented-image-shows-a-dolphins-echo..., which points to this.
Kinnard 11y ago
"Research team leader Jack Kassewitz of SpeakDolphin.com said in a press release that “our recent success has left us all speechless. We now think it is safe to speculate that dolphins may employ a ‘sono-pictorial’ form of language, a language of pictures that they share with each other. If that proves to be true an exciting future lies ahead for inter species communications.”"
- jessaustin 11y ago
  If that proves to be true an exciting future lies ahead for inter species communications. So, porn?
baxter001 11y ago
Simply because it's possible to deconvolve a dolphins sonar clicks into a 2 dimensional representation approximating our visual senses doesn't mean they have any such similar experience of it, on top of that, the whole linguistic angle seems to be wild speculation.
- colanderman 11y ago
  I cannot find it now, but there was some recent study that showed that dolphins can emit clicks which match echolocation returns, in essence communicating "images" to each other. Presumably this is what they're referring to.
  - amalag 11y ago
    I think that is an urban legend at this point. I also heard this claim from a colleague. When I did research I found nothing of the sort.
- jey 11y ago
  No, but it would be the same information content -- the dolphin's subjective experience of the signal could be different, but this representation shows us (humans) the information in the signal. Anyway, this SpeakDolphin.com and "CymaScope" thing is clearly bullshit: https://www.cymascope.com/ https://www.cymascope.com/ Looks like they're maybe gearing up to sell 3D prints of bullshit? http://www.speakdolphin.com/pressRelease/Press_Release_3D_Print_Human.pdf http://www.speakdolphin.com/pressRelease/Press_Release_3D_Pr...
- bammmmm 11y ago
  jup, all they did was recording an impulse response of some click, which happened to be a dolphins. Nothing about dolphin communication (I can't even find a reference in the press realease on the strange dolpin website linked in the article) edit: I really hoped to lear, that dolphins speak in sonograms :)
tzs 11y ago
> In a scientific first, researchers have just reproduced what a dolphin saw as it encountered a male diver. I wonder why they specified that it was a male diver? Would a dolphin's echolocation be able to tell a male human from a female human? The resolution doesn't look high enough to distinguish external genitalia, but maybe differences in internal composition (such as body fat) might change the character of the echoes sufficiently to distinguish?
- cc_wk 11y ago
  Occam's Razor suggests old-fashioned sexism
  - ghurtado 11y ago
    I don't follow. How does sexism explain this?
    - conceit 11y ago
      translation of uselessly gendered pronouns where no neuter exists (as mentioned in another comment) is explained by unawareness to the source language's imprinted sexism.
- leephillips 11y ago
  There is good evidence that dolphins can see inside other mammals with their sonar and determine if there is a pregnancy. They can get information about your innards.
- hanoz 11y ago
  I'm, ahem, a bit out of my depth here, but this reads to me like a lossless translation from an original language which inherently expressed the gender. They've done the same thing with "the female dolphin".
Mz 11y ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10698937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10698937
- jey 11y ago
  So even The Smithsonian's editors can't recognize bullshit? Bummer.
porsupah 11y ago
I may just be being very slow today, but the methodology is rather unclear to me. eg "imprinted the signal onto a water membrane and then computer enhanced the resulting image" I'll admit, I'm.. not entirely persuaded by CymaScope's "biology" page: https://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/biology.html https://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/biology.html "Cymatics--the trigger for life? Spiritual traditions from many cultures speak of sound as having been responsible for the creation of life. The words of St John's gospel are a good example: In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. ['Word' meaning 'sound'] The science of cymatics, the study of visible sound, is beginning to yield clues to one of the most challenging questions in science: what triggered the creation of life on earth? The hypothetical model we have developed was inspired by ancient traditions and demonstrates that sound and cymatic forces could have worked together to become the dynamic force that created the first stirrings of life."
- 100ideas 11y ago
  This page describes the methodology in a bit more detail: http://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/oceanography.html http://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/oceanography.html According to that page, here is what they claim to have done: they placed an object (flower pot, plus-symbol, human body, etc) in front of a dolphin and recorded the echolocation sounds that reflected back from the object in the water as it was scanned by the dolphin. Then they reproduced the recording of the reflected echolocation pulse and focused it onto a small dish of water such that a two-dimensional surface wave was generated on its surface, which was then imaged (how fast? how many times? not clear) using the "cymascope". These images were then further "computer enhanced". Disturbingly, each of these images revealed the face of Richard David James[1]. The rationale behind this methodology is that it approximates (according to them; I have no idea if this is true) the way echolocation pulses are received by the dolphin's cochlea. They claim that the incoming sound pulses are translated into surface acoustic waves that propagate across the basilar and tectorial membranes in the dolphins cochlea. (see this image: http://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/images/Dolphin-sees-with-soundREV.jpg http://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/images/Dolphin-sees-w...) This is the surface wave pattern they attempted to reproduce on the surface of the water in their "cymascope." Gonna go see if I can find any peer reviewed articles on this stuff. [1]: lol no jk
lobster_johnson 11y ago
This is spiritual new-age pseudoscience, and it's not worthy of HN. The web site is by a group called Sonic Age America [1], which turns out to be a guy named John Stuart Reid and his wife [2], whose occupation is "energetic healer". They believe that life started with sound, and have invented "cymatics, the study of visible sound" ("based on the principle that when sound encounters a membrane such as your skin or the surface of water, it imprints an invisible pattern of energy") and "sound healing" ("sound is fast regaining its place as the pre-eminent healing modality") [2]. [1] https://www.cymascope.com/aboutus.html https://www.cymascope.com/aboutus.html [2] https://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/Caduceus%20article-1.zip https://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/Caduceus%20article-1...
- 100ideas 11y ago
  I agree that much of their content has a "new-agey" feel, but that's not sufficient to discredit the particulars of the claims they are making about dolphin communication. It's conceivable their new-agey motivations for the work could nonetheless have led to a legitimate discovery, even if it is shrouded in quacky words like "cymatics".
  - dTal 11y ago
    "Cymatics" isn't quacky, though it may have been co-opted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymatics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymatics

60 points by eric_h 11y ago

dang 11y ago

Url changed from http://gizmodo.com/unprecedented-image-shows-a-dolphins-echolocated-impres-1746714755 http://gizmodo.com/unprecedented-image-shows-a-dolphins-echo..., which points to this.

Kinnard 11y ago

"Research team leader Jack Kassewitz of SpeakDolphin.com said in a press release that “our recent success has left us all speechless. We now think it is safe to speculate that dolphins may employ a ‘sono-pictorial’ form of language, a language of pictures that they share with each other. If that proves to be true an exciting future lies ahead for inter species communications.”"

jessaustin 11y ago
If that proves to be true an exciting future lies ahead for inter species communications. So, porn?

baxter001 11y ago

Simply because it's possible to deconvolve a dolphins sonar clicks into a 2 dimensional representation approximating our visual senses doesn't mean they have any such similar experience of it, on top of that, the whole linguistic angle seems to be wild speculation.

colanderman 11y ago
I cannot find it now, but there was some recent study that showed that dolphins can emit clicks which match echolocation returns, in essence communicating "images" to each other. Presumably this is what they're referring to.
- amalag 11y ago
  I think that is an urban legend at this point. I also heard this claim from a colleague. When I did research I found nothing of the sort.
jey 11y ago
No, but it would be the same information content -- the dolphin's subjective experience of the signal could be different, but this representation shows us (humans) the information in the signal. Anyway, this SpeakDolphin.com and "CymaScope" thing is clearly bullshit: https://www.cymascope.com/ https://www.cymascope.com/ Looks like they're maybe gearing up to sell 3D prints of bullshit? http://www.speakdolphin.com/pressRelease/Press_Release_3D_Print_Human.pdf http://www.speakdolphin.com/pressRelease/Press_Release_3D_Pr...
bammmmm 11y ago
jup, all they did was recording an impulse response of some click, which happened to be a dolphins. Nothing about dolphin communication (I can't even find a reference in the press realease on the strange dolpin website linked in the article) edit: I really hoped to lear, that dolphins speak in sonograms :)

tzs 11y ago

> In a scientific first, researchers have just reproduced what a dolphin saw as it encountered a male diver. I wonder why they specified that it was a male diver? Would a dolphin's echolocation be able to tell a male human from a female human? The resolution doesn't look high enough to distinguish external genitalia, but maybe differences in internal composition (such as body fat) might change the character of the echoes sufficiently to distinguish?

cc_wk 11y ago
Occam's Razor suggests old-fashioned sexism
- ghurtado 11y ago
  I don't follow. How does sexism explain this?
  - conceit 11y ago
    translation of uselessly gendered pronouns where no neuter exists (as mentioned in another comment) is explained by unawareness to the source language's imprinted sexism.
leephillips 11y ago
There is good evidence that dolphins can see inside other mammals with their sonar and determine if there is a pregnancy. They can get information about your innards.
hanoz 11y ago
I'm, ahem, a bit out of my depth here, but this reads to me like a lossless translation from an original language which inherently expressed the gender. They've done the same thing with "the female dolphin".

Mz 11y ago

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10698937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10698937

jey 11y ago
So even The Smithsonian's editors can't recognize bullshit? Bummer.

porsupah 11y ago

I may just be being very slow today, but the methodology is rather unclear to me. eg "imprinted the signal onto a water membrane and then computer enhanced the resulting image" I'll admit, I'm.. not entirely persuaded by CymaScope's "biology" page: https://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/biology.html https://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/biology.html "Cymatics--the trigger for life? Spiritual traditions from many cultures speak of sound as having been responsible for the creation of life. The words of St John's gospel are a good example: In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. ['Word' meaning 'sound'] The science of cymatics, the study of visible sound, is beginning to yield clues to one of the most challenging questions in science: what triggered the creation of life on earth? The hypothetical model we have developed was inspired by ancient traditions and demonstrates that sound and cymatic forces could have worked together to become the dynamic force that created the first stirrings of life."

100ideas 11y ago
This page describes the methodology in a bit more detail: http://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/oceanography.html http://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/oceanography.html According to that page, here is what they claim to have done: they placed an object (flower pot, plus-symbol, human body, etc) in front of a dolphin and recorded the echolocation sounds that reflected back from the object in the water as it was scanned by the dolphin. Then they reproduced the recording of the reflected echolocation pulse and focused it onto a small dish of water such that a two-dimensional surface wave was generated on its surface, which was then imaged (how fast? how many times? not clear) using the "cymascope". These images were then further "computer enhanced". Disturbingly, each of these images revealed the face of Richard David James[1]. The rationale behind this methodology is that it approximates (according to them; I have no idea if this is true) the way echolocation pulses are received by the dolphin's cochlea. They claim that the incoming sound pulses are translated into surface acoustic waves that propagate across the basilar and tectorial membranes in the dolphins cochlea. (see this image: http://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/images/Dolphin-sees-with-soundREV.jpg http://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/images/Dolphin-sees-w...) This is the surface wave pattern they attempted to reproduce on the surface of the water in their "cymascope." Gonna go see if I can find any peer reviewed articles on this stuff. [1]: lol no jk

lobster_johnson 11y ago

This is spiritual new-age pseudoscience, and it's not worthy of HN. The web site is by a group called Sonic Age America [1], which turns out to be a guy named John Stuart Reid and his wife [2], whose occupation is "energetic healer". They believe that life started with sound, and have invented "cymatics, the study of visible sound" ("based on the principle that when sound encounters a membrane such as your skin or the surface of water, it imprints an invisible pattern of energy") and "sound healing" ("sound is fast regaining its place as the pre-eminent healing modality") [2]. [1] https://www.cymascope.com/aboutus.html https://www.cymascope.com/aboutus.html [2] https://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/Caduceus%20article-1.zip https://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/Caduceus%20article-1...

100ideas 11y ago
I agree that much of their content has a "new-agey" feel, but that's not sufficient to discredit the particulars of the claims they are making about dolphin communication. It's conceivable their new-agey motivations for the work could nonetheless have led to a legitimate discovery, even if it is shrouded in quacky words like "cymatics".
- dTal 11y ago
  "Cymatics" isn't quacky, though it may have been co-opted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymatics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymatics