13 ms·

Dolphins Call Each Other By Name

414 points by rblion 14y ago

ChuckMcM 14y ago
That is an interesting result. Some birds mimic other bird's songs but I don't know of an example in the bird family where an individual had a unique song.
- tzs 14y ago
  How about Emperor Penguins? When one of a pair returns from feeding, it finds the other by recognizing its unique calls.
  - LargeWu 14y ago
    I think the finding here is not that dolphin A has a unique call, but that dolphin B calls out to A using A's unique call in order to find A. This is as opposed to B simply listening for A's call.
- chongli 14y ago
  Parrots might be naming their young: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/grrlscientist/2012/sep/22/1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/grrlscientist/2012/sep/22/...
mtrimpe 14y ago
Dolphins are exactly why I feel SETI is such a misguided (in a sweet way) effort. Here we are, searching for extraterrestrial intelligence while we can't even communicate with the other intelligent species on our own planet. Glad to see we're making progress though!
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  We communicate with dolphins, gorillas, elephants, etc. all the time. SETI is looking for technological species.
- yareally 14y ago
  Parrots call each other by names as well[1] and crows have been shown to speak in two different dialects depending if they are with a group or among individuals[2]. In the same link about crows, they have also been seen using tools in the wild and in experiments using "meta tools", something that only primates have been observed doing (using one tool to reach another tool that will be used for their end goal [generally food]). It's quite amazing how much we take the animals around us for granted sometimes since all of this, like the dolphins is really new research that has only hit the tip of the iceberg. The documentary about crows from PBS is quite insightful (full episode is at the link below if your region allows it). I was never much of a fan of crows and considered them kind of an annoyance. However, after watching it, I gained much more respect for their intelligence and complexity. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed9A4HPdXgQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed9A4HPdXgQ [2] http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/a-murder-of-crows/full-episode/5977/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/a-murder-of-crows/fu... edit: the OP link actually mentions those particular crows and their tool usage in one of the slides.
  - Catalina 14y ago
    Modern culture is filled with prejudices towards non-human forms of life. Not only are animals taken for granted and exploited for the well-being of the human species, which is wrongfully considered a "superior" life form, but life itself is taken for granted. Realizing just "now" that non-human life forms are more complex than we thought is simply because our ability to even be open minded about that possibility was completely suffocated by the hubris of humanity.
    - yareally 14y ago
      Indeed. I'd say a mixture of people having more time to study such things as well as people getting over the idea that we have nothing to learn from animals. I study animal intelligence as sort of a hobby in my free time and have focused on birds lately since they seem to get less recognition for intelligence than mammals or other animals that dominate television shows. Everyone knows parrots can mimic, but little mainstream news goes beyond that. Corvids (jays[1], crows[2], starlings, etc) can actually mimic in a similar manner. Birds in general are quite misrepresented and phrases like "eat like a bird" or "bird brained" are quite incorrect. We all come from the same basic building blocks through evolution, so it would be quite weird to say that we don't share traits with our fellow animals. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T6pUxthClw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T6pUxthClw [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgTCoTD3BWI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgTCoTD3BWI
- jlgreco 14y ago
  SETI isn't about communication though, at least not the conversational type; the speed of light is a cruel mistress.
- weavejester 14y ago
  SETI is about finding alien signals, not necessarily understanding them. However, it's likely that any extraterrestrial intelligence capable of sending out signals powerful enough to reach us, will have an understanding of science and mathematics, which is more than we have in common with dolphins.
  - yesbabyyes 14y ago
    That sounds very intriguing. However, it's likely that any extraterrestrial intelligence capable of maintaining life on it's home planet, will have an understanding of their fellow life forms, which is more than we have.
    - weavejester 14y ago
      What makes you say that? It doesn't take too much knowledge to maintain a biosphere, otherwise it would have collapsed long before humans arrived on Earth. It seems more to do with how cautious you want to be, how far a race is willing to push the environment in return for faster progress. I also suspect that any extraterrestrial intelligence capable of making a signal detectable by our equipment would have given up its biological roots a long time ago, as life as we know it is badly adapted for space travel.
      - scotty79 14y ago
        > It doesn't take too much knowledge to maintain a biosphere, otherwise it would have collapsed long before humans arrived on Earth. Well. It did. Multiple times.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event It's just that things tend do kick back in if you give them few millions of years.
    - ceejayoz 14y ago
      > However, it's likely that any extraterrestrial intelligence capable of maintaining life on it's home planet, will have an understanding of their fellow life forms, which is more than we have. That's quite the assumption. Right now, our sample size of one shows the opposite.
- 2muchcoffeeman 14y ago
  There's no reason we can't pursue multiple lines of research in parallel. It's probably more efficient too.
- bitwize 14y ago
  SETI is not misguided. We've known for a long time that Earth was hospitable to intelligent life (us). That there are other species with similar levels of intelligent just makes Earth more awesome. But it would be a complete mindfuck if we found other intelligent life in space, where before there were mainly only stars, rocks, and interesting formations of liquid and gas somewhere in between. It would change everything.
  - mtrimpe 14y ago
    I'd say having a meaningful conversation with a dolphin would be a much bigger mindfuck. For all we know we could be discussing how the transition to Kantian philosophy played out slightly different for them in a few years.
    - bitwize 14y ago
      Dr. Irene Pepperberg has had meaningful conversations with an African Grey parrot. It was pretty cool. It gives me hope for a future of being part of a society with other sapient species in it. But it wouldn't be quite the "whoa, on large enough scales the universe _really is_ the same, everywhere" type feeling that humans having meaningful conversations with, say, Fookin' Prawns would.
  - seldo 14y ago
    The thing about SETI is that it is not really a search for intelligent life, it's a search for "intelligent life that broadcasts radio waves of a frequency and power that we can detect in a pattern and on a timescale similar enough to our own communications that we can recognize it". Fermi's paradox basically boils down to: if intelligent life is at all common, it should be everywhere we look, and yet we don't see any. The traditional position is that therefore if we don't see intelligent life, it must be because it's too rare, or communication across interstellar distances is impossible. But the other possible answer is that intelligent life is everywhere, and we just don't understand or even recognize it as such. The fact that we've been living with dolphins for millions of years and actively studying them for decades and have only just worked out a pretty basic fact -- they have names for each other -- despite the fact that they share most of their genes with us and live under the same environmental conditions exactly, suggests that we are probably really really bad at recognizing intelligent life that isn't exactly like our own.
- tsieling 14y ago
  SETI isn't about communicating with alien lifeforms, it's about detecting signs of other intelligences than ourselves. Studying these aspects of dolphins is actually the same endeavour, just looking in different places.
- leoh 14y ago
  I feel the same way about projects looking into habitation of foreign planets. The science and the engineering behind the endeavor is interesting, but why seriously not start thinking about and practicing sustainability in places like Antarctica?
  - s-v 14y ago
    Colonizing another planet is a hedge against a destructive event (asteroid, bomb, etc) completely extinguishing the human species.
    - philwelch 14y ago
      Colonizing another planet would be a speciating event. Alpha Centurians would become a different species anyway, just like a population of birds that gets stranded on a remote island becomes a different species.
- eri 14y ago
  I think what really excites most people about SETI is not just the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, but extraterrestrial life that's more advanced than we are. Not sure what 'advanced' means though :)
- jasonzemos 14y ago
  This is a healthy sentiment that shows respect for the otherness of the other. I do think SETI is still necessary only because the empirical platform that all life shares is universal -- the radio spectrum, physics -- it's the same for all species. But this thread still clearly deserves some quotes from Stanislaw Lem: "We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos." "We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds."
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  An intelligent species is different from a technological one, by a huge magnitude. That's not to say that dolphins aren't worthwhile to communicate with but there will never be a dolphin shakespeare, or pythagoras, or einstein, or da vinci. The options for being able to communicate with a technological species are astronomically greater than with a non-technological intelligent species.
- martingoodson 14y ago
  SETI are one of the biggest supporters of research into dolphin vocalisations. Laurance Doyle, who is at SETI, is one of the pioneers of the field. http://www.tusker.com/tusker-trips/eclipse-trips/archaeo/art.SetiNews.cfm http://www.tusker.com/tusker-trips/eclipse-trips/archaeo/art...
acheron 14y ago
"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars, and so on -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons." -- Douglas Adams
- AlexanderDhoore 14y ago
  So long, and thanks for all the fish!
- cpeterso 14y ago
  Another science-fiction series about dolphins is David Brin's Uplift books. Humans use genetic engineering to "uplift" dolphins' and chimpanzees' intelligence. Then they all fly around in water-filled spaceships "manned" by dolphin crews. :D
srean 14y ago
They are also known to build difficult to make toys (air bubble vortex rings) to entertain themselves. They have to discover how to make it. Sometimes they can be quite possessive, they would break the toy if someone not so knowledgeable wants to play with it. Once a dolphin figures it out how to make one, his/her peers eventually figure it out too. So it kind of spreads within a group like fashion. This behavior has been observed both in captivity and in the wild. https://www.google.com/search?q=dolphin+vortex+ring https://www.google.com/search?q=dolphin+vortex+ring (a time sink right here) They also have what appears to be fratricide were they bludgeon another to death targeting vital organs (I dont have a reference to this, but I recall reading it on BBC). I have seen dumber people on and around TV. I am sure there are HN'ers who are divers and have first had experience with dolphins, we would love to hear the stories.
- prawn 14y ago
  I wonder if there is a wider gap between the smartest and dumbest humans, and the equivalent extremes in other species? At our best, we accomplish astonishing things that melt brains to consider. However, the worst of us really are little more than what they would call (with derision) "animals", responding to base urges and the like, but dangerous, vindictive and controlling.
  - bilbo0s 14y ago
    "...dangerous, vindictive and controlling..." I think the low end of human "intelligence" is something other than what you are talking about here. I think the low end of human "intelligence" would generally be associated with something more akin to mental retardation. Whereas what you're pointing out is more... like the behavior of a sociopath. Dangerous, vindictive and controlling is not a sign of a lack of intelligence... in fact... it's probably the opposite I would imagine.
    - ekianjo 14y ago
      > Dangerous, vindictive and controlling is not a sign of a lack of intelligence... in fact... it's probably the opposite I would imagine. I am not sure I understand why you think this way.
mtgx 14y ago
Have they tried testing this on dogs, too? I assume they don't do that, but it would be interesting if they did the test on dogs, too.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  And ferrets.
gruseom 14y ago
John Lilly, who spent years working with dolphins, believed that they were smart enough to be cute and friendly to humans because they understood how dangerous we were.
- pvaldes 14y ago
  Not necessarily. Most of the time the people think about how cute is a dolphin is misunderstanding the animal. If a Lion shows you the teeth, you don't think is a cute kitty, is angry!, but, hey, this dolphin that show us the teeth "is smiling"!. This "smile" is in fact an agressive display in the wild. Being faster, well armed, and better fitted for water, a dolphin can avoid dangerous humans in the water any time he wants. In fact a lot of alone exemplars search for company, actively, even if is from humans, and are curious. Some dolphins simply like the human company, or the benefits derived of this, other not... at all.
  - mjmahone17 14y ago
    On the other hand, animals that are domesticated become "cuter." Look at the Russian fox domestication program (and the mirror aggressiveness program). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox These foxes actually share a good number of features with dogs and humans: it may be that, because dolphins are such social creatures, we perceive them as cute because they are more or less domesticated.
    - icegreentea 14y ago
      A suspected reason why domesticated animals cuter is the ideal that traits that are typically selected are traits found in youth. The general term for this is neoteny [1], which is where youthful traits are held on to into adult life. Typical traits selected for are reduced aggression and increased docility. The hypothesis is that the animals that displayed these traits likely also had a variety of other relatively child-like traits, such as larger heads, larger foreheads (I guess this might be why dolphins look so darn cute), larger eyes, floppy ears, and etc - on the basis that the set of genes that control the development of adult traits are typically linked together. The result being that as we selected for the tamest animals, we also selected those that were cuter. It's kind of circular in that traits that make things cute are typically those that are found as young - the young form of most animals sharing the same general 'cute' features. One thing of note is that the concept of neoteny is often invoked to explain how humans diverged so rapidly from the other primates. If you accept that explanation, and take the idea a bit further, then you end up with a somewhat bizarre and perhaps disturbing idea that humans are actually the result of self-domesticating primates (obviously a gross over simplification... but kind of a fun thought to play around with). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny
ricardobeat 14y ago
“Hey everybody! I’m an adult healthy male named George, and I mean you no harm!” That would be more like "Hey everyone, I'm George". Humans also 'encode' information in that sense - from that introduction you could probably tell age, general health and friendliness. The day we can talk to any stranger dolphin and have a real conversation will be alike to contacting alien life.
- javajosh 14y ago
  >The day we can talk to any stranger dolphin and have a real conversation will be alike to contacting alien life. Actually, I don't think it will be all that alien. The conversation will probably be quite understandable. You will get conversations about fishing, who's pregnant, who you want to make pregnant, how your kids are doing, the temperature of the water, where the predators are. They probably tell stories, but they will be quite understandable to us. Fundamentally it's because the basic constraints of their lives are just like ours: get raised by mom, have friends, learn to hunt, mate, avoid predators and have fun while you can!
- ChrisCooper 14y ago
  Very true. On that topic, "...these communications consist of whistles, not words." Not to suggest that they're actually speaking a language, but a language consisting of whistles could still easily contain words. It would just have a different set of sounds.
  - kaybe 14y ago
    It's not like it would be a new concept to humankind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistle_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistle_language
felideon 14y ago
After some rabbit hole googling related to my 'Seaquarium' digression below, I encountered this 2010 transcript[1] of an ex-Flipper trainer: "Flipper was a wild animal that lived in Biscayne Bay before we captured her and dragged her, kicking and screaming, to the Miami Seaquarium and put her in a tank and gave her a stage name, Flipper. Her name was really Cathy. Well, not really. Her real name was [whistles]. Dolphins have a signature whistle that their mother gives them." - Ric O'Barry So it seems like this research proves what dolphin trainers have known, ostensibly, for many years? [1] http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_try_to_save_dolphins http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_t... ====== OT: > The researchers also intensely studied four captive adult male dolphins housed at The Seas Aquarium, also in Florida. Made me giggle. Don't they mean, the [Miami] Seaquarium? If so, Flipper[1][2] is part of the study! [1] http://miamiseaquarium.com/Shows/Flipper-Dolphin http://miamiseaquarium.com/Shows/Flipper-Dolphin [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipper_(1964_TV_series)#Filming_locations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipper_(1964_TV_series)#Filmin...
pg 14y ago
Someone should define a canonical way to transform dolphins' whistles into syllables. Then we could at least sort of refer to them by their names.
- felideon 14y ago
  Apparently, dolphin trainers have the ability to whistle their names: "Her name was really Cathy. Well, not really. Her real name was [whistles]."[1] [1] http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_try_to_save_dolphins http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_t...
  - aendruk 14y ago
    54:33
    - StavrosK 14y ago
      Thank you.
      - felideon 14y ago
        Maybe it wasn't entirely obvious, but there is a transcript at the bottom.
- nickpinkston 14y ago
  I'm also sure we could make a sort of pin-yin conversion system for said syllables to make a pseudo-pronunciation.
- Tekker 14y ago
  Then we could build it into Unicode!
- tokipin 14y ago
  then we could take the next step(s) and build a translator!
Viruptc 14y ago
Unbelievable that humans still kill these amazing animals http://www.seashepherd.org/cove-guardians/ http://www.seashepherd.org/cove-guardians/
- tsieling 14y ago
  Well, people kill people, too. But I agree with the underlying sentiment that we should be taking their place in the world much more seriously than we do most other animals.
- gnarbarian 14y ago
  Well we kill each other more, but dolphins are much more cute.
javajosh 14y ago
I will wager money that their names translate to things like: Big nose Funny tail Horny boy Big mamma Deep swimmer Not just amusing, but also useful. By correlating individual behaviors and physical features with names, we might be able to unlock dolphin language! Which would be incredible!
- alan_cx 14y ago
  Great idea. We humans were named after many characteristics. Jobs, what we see when the child is born, what kinds of personality we want our children to have, etc.
maxharris 14y ago
I think it's a mistake to say that they call each other by "name," because that implies the ability to form concepts/speak a language, and there is absolutely zero evidence for that. Even the article is careful to point that out: While researchers often hesitate to apply the “l word” -- language -- to non-human communications, bottlenose dolphins and possibly other dolphin species clearly have a very complex and sophisticated communication system.
- crucialfelix 14y ago
  Very true. Its an anthropomorphism. Its much more interesting to learn what cultural and communication structures they do use. Not to try to turn them into cartoons or easily human-digestible concepts.
- wfn 14y ago
  Depends on your definition of 'name' and your system/formalization of the act of reference and/or semantics. In this case, 'name' seems to mean 'proper name', and there are systems explaining proper names as symbols used to refer, but not to carry semantic charge (whatever that would entail). For example in my native tongue many town names are named after rivers large and small that do - or - only used to flow next to / past those towns. Yet we don't suddenly change the proper name: the reference still works, but we do not need to cognize the semantic contents (originally associated with the name, if that was the case anyway; if you know where Baroomghtown is, I can use the term to refer to it and my reference will succeed as it were). That was a mouthful. My (insignificant) point: perhaps they would only need cognitive machinery for referring to (in some simple(?) sense) / distinguishing between themselves. That is: (1) usage of proper names does not (necessarily) imply ability to speak a language (perhaps that's all I meant; talk about nitpicking..); (2) there's quite a lot of research showing that animals form concepts left and right (could dig something up, but googling under those keywords would yield enough). Consider this interesting report: Under Pepperberg’s patient tutelage, Alex [a parrot] learned how to use his vocal tract to imitate almost one hundred English words, including the sounds for all of these foods, although he calls an apple a “banerry.” “Apples taste a little bit like bananas to him, and they look a little bit like cherries, so Alex made up that word for them,” Pepperberg said. (NGM, 2008: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal-minds/virginia-morell-text http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal-minds... (a curious article)) So it might be possible to conceive of a schema such that [arbitrary symbols (sequences of syllables, etc.)] + [concepts] => proper names; and those would indeed be what we are used to calling 'proper names', a subset of the category denoted by 'names', not something else. However, I agree completely with the sentiments re: fears of (over-)anthropomorphizing and projecting our own 'theories of mind' onto other life.
rwhitman 14y ago
I bet there would be economic opportunity in developing commercial dolphin-human communication software and interfaces. Imagine how much benefit to deep sea construction and exploration there would be if training and employing dolphins using natural language was possible. Or to shipping, fishing etc.
- WiseWeasel 14y ago
  Dolphin-based sitcoms where the dolphin says "it's a living" and shrugs his dolphin shoulders.
  - krapp 14y ago
    When we uplift them, we'll have to remember to give them shoulders. And eyebrows. Good comedy depends on eyebrows.
crucialfelix 14y ago
I went through a Cetacean and cephalopods obsession last year. What really freaks me out is what Dolphins looked like when they were still land animals: http://understanddolphins.tripod.com/dolphinevolution.html http://understanddolphins.tripod.com/dolphinevolution.html Also the perceptual systems of octopus and squid are amazing. Cuttlefish can perceive the polarization of light. This helps for contrast and edge detection. Many Cephalopods (octopuses, squid, cuttlefish) can see with their arms and then replay the image on the other side like a video screen. Dolphins can tell the difference between a quarter and a dime from 100m away using sonar. The click generating system emanates from the top of their head, in the area of the third chakra. We have a very limited sense of space and an all too focused sense of self. But we have a lot of oil and we can dig shit up and drive around real fast and think we are really important.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  > What really freaks me out is what Dolphins looked like when they were still land animals I took a look at that picture, then imagined the creature sniggering like Mutley from those old Hanna Barbera cartoons.
- knowaveragejoe 14y ago
  > We have a very limited sense of space and an all too focused sense of self. But we have a lot of oil and we can dig shit up and drive around real fast and think we are really important. We can also appreciate these things as no other species on Earth can, to the best of our knowledge.
- bmuon 14y ago
  Go hang around sea lions next time. Their social structure is a lot of fun to watch and they really look like water-oriented dogs.
mxfh 14y ago
The full paper is available for free from the Royal Society B: Vocal copying of individually distinctive signature whistles in bottlenose dolphins http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1757/20130053.full http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1757/2013... The orginal press release is here: http://www.smru.st-and.ac.uk/newsItem.aspx?ni=1611 http://www.smru.st-and.ac.uk/newsItem.aspx?ni=1611 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-21507301 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-21...
stcredzero 14y ago
> Bottlenose dolphins call out the specific names of loved ones when they become separated, a study finds. ...Holy, f^~kin crap! We've been in the presence of other sentients this whole time. Enslaved them. Killed them while gathering food. Holy, f^~kin crap!
- noonespecial 14y ago
  Its an uneasy thought to have that sentience might not be a binary function that humans have and other species lack. It might be a continuum. Some animals are far more sentient than others. Its followed closely by the even more uncomfortable thought that this might vary greatly inside the species. Finally this eerie train of thought pulls into the last station and you think that if the above is true than its almost certain that some humans are less sentient than others. There be dragons.
  - pyre 14y ago
    Well, you could take that as "less sentient humans should be treated like animals and abused/treated like property/eaten." On the other hand, you could take it as: - Maybe I shouldn't eat all / some animals. - Maybe some / all animals should have more rights and not be treated as objects, but living beings. [Not to mention the Christian fundamentalists that will refer to the Bible stating that God gave man domain over animals, so things like lighting cats on fire for fun are ok.]
  - scotty79 14y ago
    I totally agree on non-binary sentience. I think level of sentience correlates with capacity to experience dreams. I think cats and dogs and even smaller animals are somewhat sentient because they dream. What's more interesting, what level of sentience could be achieved with brain that has lot more power than human brain?
- UnFleshedOne 14y ago
  We've been constantly killing and enslaving sentients while gathering food and resources ever since humans became sentient themselves. Still do. On the other hand, one could say that a species killing and exploiting their own is internal problem of that species, while doing that to another intelligent species is morally worse on some level.
leoh 14y ago
Last year around this time, I had the opportunity to interact with two dolphins in captivity. Being with them, they felt so present and warm, like being around a perceptive old friend. I had never had that experience with an animal before, except fellow humans. It's something I will never forget.
- dfc 14y ago
  I take it that you are not a dog person?
  - leoh 14y ago
    Recently my family got a dog. Love him. But his presence and awareness is very different.
wfn 14y ago
I referred to this NGM article in another sub-parent comment here, but I think it contains very relevant on-topic animal intelligence language-related insights, so posting a link and a couple of short excerpts from it here: Under Pepperberg’s patient tutelage, Alex [a parrot] learned how to use his vocal tract to imitate almost one hundred English words, including the sounds for all of these foods, although he calls an apple a “banerry.” “Apples taste a little bit like bananas to him, and they look a little bit like cherries, so Alex made up that word for them,” Pepperberg said. [...] [...] because Alex was able to produce a close approximation of the sounds of some English words, Pepperberg could ask him questions about a bird’s basic understanding of the world. She couldn’t ask him what he was thinking about, but she could ask him about his knowledge of numbers, shapes, and colors. To demonstrate, Pepperberg carried Alex on her arm to a tall wooden perch in the middle of the room. She then retrieved a green key and a small green cup from a basket on a shelf. She held up the two items to Alex’s eye. “What’s same?” she asked. Without hesitation, Alex’s beak opened: “Co-lor.” “What’s different?” Pepperberg asked. “Shape,” Alex said. Article: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal-minds/virginia-morell-text http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal-minds...
- the_gipsy 14y ago
  From that excerpt, all the parrot can tell is if two objects are the same color or not.
  - wfn 14y ago
    Not really: the parrot must have an internal representation of 'color' as something (a concept / quality) that can be had and shared between things. It (hm, s/he) must therefore understand that it is (it must represent it as) an abstract quality in the sense that it can be had by different things (likewise with 'shape'). Well so what? This entails (I would argue) that it has the capacity to store and operate on abstract things (more or less the definition of 'symbol') - and in this very sense, the parrot has the faculty for symbolic processing/operations. Not only does it extract properties from sensory data and generalize them into concepts (things can be wibbly-wobbly-in-way-A, or wibbly-wobbly-in-way-B (first order of abstraction (well, n+1 really)) => things have wibbliness, and some things have the same kind of wibbliness (second order (or n+2))), but also, it may operate on these concepts and use them in assertion/negation propositions: some objects have the same color but not the same shape. (I use the term proposition in the more general logical sense, not necessarily as in 'a linguistic assertion'; but when asked, the parrot provides an answer that can be put in a truth-table so to speak.) Interestingly, that's one of the ways to actually define 'semantic content': something which provides truth-conditions (e.g. some language-formalizing systems would say that the proposition "The present King of France is bald" has no semantic content / has no meaning because it is neither true nor false (presently there is no King in France, and the reference fails) (though Russell would disagree ('how can it be neither true nor false?') (if interested: "On Denoting", 1905.)) So what #2? Well, one could argue that symbolic apparatus + semantics (a set of truth-functions / grounds for constructing them) => 'language', so it's kind of a big thing, I'd say. (At the very least, evidence towards abstract thought in animals is always somehow very interesting for me.) Again: symbols (abstracting from properties => projecting these abstracts back onto sensory data) + symbolic processing (basically, ability to ascribe truth/falsity to/via them) => darn interesting. There's a whole hot debate how/whether this can be achieved 'bottom-up' from neural networks (Connectionism) (is 'symbolic processing' the proper way of reduction? Even if cognition is 'symbolic' in the end, perhaps it is best to model this starting bottom-up and arriving at 'symb.processing' as an emergent/epiphenomenal capacity?) - or, whether you need 'innate capacity' for symbolic processing / language ('language genes') - top-bottom language faculties (that all add up to those same neural networks, but simply, you won't get much by starting bottom-up) (Classicism / Nativism (not really interchangeable, using loosely / generalizing, etc.)) (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/#ConDeb http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/#ConDeb , http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/connectionism/#ShaConBetConCla http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/connectionism/#ShaConBetCo... , etc.) </convoluted comment> edit fixed and added even more confusing stuff.
rblion 14y ago
Did you know that dolphins love to rape each other and some have tried to rape a human?! Check out this list of interesting facts... http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-6-badass-facts-you-never-knew-about-dolphins http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-6-badass-facts-you...
- westicle 14y ago
  It's amazing how similar they are to humans in many respects.
  - rblion 14y ago
    It is. Highly intelligent, playful, social, strategic, sexual, and with bursts of aggression.
DanielBMarkham 14y ago
Because I ended up doing a bit of reading about dolphins earlier this week, I thought I'd share a bit of trivia in this thread: dolphins also have prehensile penises. (Like an elephant's nose) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1l9V6Lfe2uE http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1... And they're also not-very-nice (Tongue firmly in cheek here. Of course animals do not possess human qualities like "nice" or "asinine") http://deepseanews.com/2013/02/10-reasons-why-dolphins-are-aholes/ http://deepseanews.com/2013/02/10-reasons-why-dolphins-are-a... Now that we know they have names and are able to make tools, this has to make them one of the most unique species on the planet aside from man. Wonder what would have happened had they just invented some form of writing?
- scotty79 14y ago
  I think we eat them not the other way around only because underwater is a crappy place to develop multi-generational culture. You need surfaces you can draw your symbols on and appendages that can manipulate things while looking at them. I don't feel that I'm member of the best species on earth. Just the one that is ahead in the race but only by a very thin margin. Fortunately we reached "writing" and "science" checkpoints first which means that we effectively won.
dchichkov 14y ago
As far as I know Royal Penguins also can call each other by name. And can distinguish a call from afar in the noise of hundreds of other penguins calling each other. There must be a lot of redundancy in the call, I guess. Also penguins sound totally like one of these old 14400 baud modems ;)
ttar 14y ago
Dolphin language is similar to human language. http://www.tusker.com/tusker-trips/eclipse-trips/archaeo/art.SetiNews.cfm http://www.tusker.com/tusker-trips/eclipse-trips/archaeo/art...
traughber 14y ago
Growing up, I was lucky enough to occasionally join a group of scientists aboard a research vessel off the northern tip of the Bahamas. We would spend hours a day and up to two weeks at a time on the open ocean swimming with them and making visual and audio recordings of their behavior. The species they study are Atlantic Spotted Dolphins (Stenella frontalis). One of the things that has always struck me about them is how social they are – they have social circles and "cliques", similar to humans. We would observe these social networks and monitor how they change over the years. This research project is unique because they've been following this same group of just a few hundred dolphins in the wild for over 25 years. Having watched video and high frequency audio recordings of them interacting with one another in the wild, it comes as no surprise that they have "names" for one another. Relatedly, Denise Herzing, the founder of that organization (the Wild Dolphin Project) will be speaking at TED this year (see Session 8, "Coded Meaning"): http://conferences.ted.com/TED2013/program/guide.php http://conferences.ted.com/TED2013/program/guide.php Here's their site: http://www.wilddolphinproject.org/about-us/mission-vision/ http://www.wilddolphinproject.org/about-us/mission-vision/
tomasien 14y ago
Did anyone else's pulse race when they saw the phrase "encodes other information"?
ComputerGuru 14y ago
Any thread on dolphins is not complete without a link to the 1992 NYT article on dolphins: [http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/18/science/dolphin-courtship-brutal-cunning-and-complex.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/18/science/dolphin-courtship-...] Here's the sad part: none of this is new. 1992. 1992. Over twenty years ago. As children they make a best friend for life, they form complicated alliances for mutual benefit, they form political alliances/gangs, they help each other out both tit-for-tat and "pro-bono" while keep score of debts (I help you today, you will owe me at some undefined point in the future), they group together to accomplish tasks (sometimes/often at the expense of other dolphins, for instance a female they are trying to get with). Another important study was done to research the presence (or lack thereof) of a universal dolphin "language" (EDIT: found source! [http://wakeup-world.com/2011/11/28/the-discovery-of-dolphin-language/ http://wakeup-world.com/2011/11/28/the-discovery-of-dolphin-...] but not peer reviewed research). It involved showing dolphins in one aquarium a sequence of objects (red ball, green box, etc.) and recording the sounds made, then travelling to another aquarium with dolphins that have never been in contact with the first and playing back the sounds made, then watching the dolphins "locate" or "identify" the object the sounds were made in response to. They achieved an astonishing (if memory serves!) 86% accuracy rate implying audible descriptions of objects, much in the same manner that a "bee dance" can be universally understood across hives/colonies except it's based on actual sounds rather than movements.</cannot find source> Regardless of whether or not you feel dolphins deserve the title of "non-human sentient beings" (whatever "sentient" means, it's such a non-word), I think anyone involved in the mass slaughter of dolphins in an attempt to ransom money should be imprisoned for being a killer (Reference: 900 dolphins killed in Solomon Islands as black mail for raise in pay negotiations. Sorry, but f* them [ http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10861279 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&... ])
- PostOnce 14y ago
  That article says they use dolphins for meat and income. It seems a little easy to sit in an armchair next to a fridge full of supermarket-bought food and complain about what islanders do to eat. Presumably, the money they claim they weren't paid would've been used on other sources of food, and when unpaid, went back to what they were doing before, with a little extra effort to piss off the non payers.
olejolej 14y ago
Like in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams :) Dolphins will govern...
lignuist 14y ago
I wonder, if there is any public repository of dolphin audio recordings.

414 points by rblion 14y ago

That is an interesting result. Some birds mimic other bird's songs but I don't know of an example in the bird family where an individual had a unique song.

tzs 14y ago
How about Emperor Penguins? When one of a pair returns from feeding, it finds the other by recognizing its unique calls.
- LargeWu 14y ago
  I think the finding here is not that dolphin A has a unique call, but that dolphin B calls out to A using A's unique call in order to find A. This is as opposed to B simply listening for A's call.
chongli 14y ago
Parrots might be naming their young: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/grrlscientist/2012/sep/22/1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/grrlscientist/2012/sep/22/...

mtrimpe 14y ago

Dolphins are exactly why I feel SETI is such a misguided (in a sweet way) effort. Here we are, searching for extraterrestrial intelligence while we can't even communicate with the other intelligent species on our own planet. Glad to see we're making progress though!

ceejayoz 14y ago
We communicate with dolphins, gorillas, elephants, etc. all the time. SETI is looking for technological species.
yareally 14y ago
Parrots call each other by names as well[1] and crows have been shown to speak in two different dialects depending if they are with a group or among individuals[2]. In the same link about crows, they have also been seen using tools in the wild and in experiments using "meta tools", something that only primates have been observed doing (using one tool to reach another tool that will be used for their end goal [generally food]). It's quite amazing how much we take the animals around us for granted sometimes since all of this, like the dolphins is really new research that has only hit the tip of the iceberg. The documentary about crows from PBS is quite insightful (full episode is at the link below if your region allows it). I was never much of a fan of crows and considered them kind of an annoyance. However, after watching it, I gained much more respect for their intelligence and complexity. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed9A4HPdXgQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed9A4HPdXgQ [2] http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/a-murder-of-crows/full-episode/5977/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/a-murder-of-crows/fu... edit: the OP link actually mentions those particular crows and their tool usage in one of the slides.
- Catalina 14y ago
  Modern culture is filled with prejudices towards non-human forms of life. Not only are animals taken for granted and exploited for the well-being of the human species, which is wrongfully considered a "superior" life form, but life itself is taken for granted. Realizing just "now" that non-human life forms are more complex than we thought is simply because our ability to even be open minded about that possibility was completely suffocated by the hubris of humanity.
  - yareally 14y ago
    Indeed. I'd say a mixture of people having more time to study such things as well as people getting over the idea that we have nothing to learn from animals. I study animal intelligence as sort of a hobby in my free time and have focused on birds lately since they seem to get less recognition for intelligence than mammals or other animals that dominate television shows. Everyone knows parrots can mimic, but little mainstream news goes beyond that. Corvids (jays[1], crows[2], starlings, etc) can actually mimic in a similar manner. Birds in general are quite misrepresented and phrases like "eat like a bird" or "bird brained" are quite incorrect. We all come from the same basic building blocks through evolution, so it would be quite weird to say that we don't share traits with our fellow animals. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T6pUxthClw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T6pUxthClw [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgTCoTD3BWI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgTCoTD3BWI
jlgreco 14y ago
SETI isn't about communication though, at least not the conversational type; the speed of light is a cruel mistress.
weavejester 14y ago
SETI is about finding alien signals, not necessarily understanding them. However, it's likely that any extraterrestrial intelligence capable of sending out signals powerful enough to reach us, will have an understanding of science and mathematics, which is more than we have in common with dolphins.
- yesbabyyes 14y ago
  That sounds very intriguing. However, it's likely that any extraterrestrial intelligence capable of maintaining life on it's home planet, will have an understanding of their fellow life forms, which is more than we have.
  - weavejester 14y ago
    What makes you say that? It doesn't take too much knowledge to maintain a biosphere, otherwise it would have collapsed long before humans arrived on Earth. It seems more to do with how cautious you want to be, how far a race is willing to push the environment in return for faster progress. I also suspect that any extraterrestrial intelligence capable of making a signal detectable by our equipment would have given up its biological roots a long time ago, as life as we know it is badly adapted for space travel.
    - scotty79 14y ago
      > It doesn't take too much knowledge to maintain a biosphere, otherwise it would have collapsed long before humans arrived on Earth. Well. It did. Multiple times.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event It's just that things tend do kick back in if you give them few millions of years.
  - ceejayoz 14y ago
    > However, it's likely that any extraterrestrial intelligence capable of maintaining life on it's home planet, will have an understanding of their fellow life forms, which is more than we have. That's quite the assumption. Right now, our sample size of one shows the opposite.
2muchcoffeeman 14y ago
There's no reason we can't pursue multiple lines of research in parallel. It's probably more efficient too.
bitwize 14y ago
SETI is not misguided. We've known for a long time that Earth was hospitable to intelligent life (us). That there are other species with similar levels of intelligent just makes Earth more awesome. But it would be a complete mindfuck if we found other intelligent life in space, where before there were mainly only stars, rocks, and interesting formations of liquid and gas somewhere in between. It would change everything.
- mtrimpe 14y ago
  I'd say having a meaningful conversation with a dolphin would be a much bigger mindfuck. For all we know we could be discussing how the transition to Kantian philosophy played out slightly different for them in a few years.
  - bitwize 14y ago
    Dr. Irene Pepperberg has had meaningful conversations with an African Grey parrot. It was pretty cool. It gives me hope for a future of being part of a society with other sapient species in it. But it wouldn't be quite the "whoa, on large enough scales the universe _really is_ the same, everywhere" type feeling that humans having meaningful conversations with, say, Fookin' Prawns would.
- seldo 14y ago
  The thing about SETI is that it is not really a search for intelligent life, it's a search for "intelligent life that broadcasts radio waves of a frequency and power that we can detect in a pattern and on a timescale similar enough to our own communications that we can recognize it". Fermi's paradox basically boils down to: if intelligent life is at all common, it should be everywhere we look, and yet we don't see any. The traditional position is that therefore if we don't see intelligent life, it must be because it's too rare, or communication across interstellar distances is impossible. But the other possible answer is that intelligent life is everywhere, and we just don't understand or even recognize it as such. The fact that we've been living with dolphins for millions of years and actively studying them for decades and have only just worked out a pretty basic fact -- they have names for each other -- despite the fact that they share most of their genes with us and live under the same environmental conditions exactly, suggests that we are probably really really bad at recognizing intelligent life that isn't exactly like our own.
tsieling 14y ago
SETI isn't about communicating with alien lifeforms, it's about detecting signs of other intelligences than ourselves. Studying these aspects of dolphins is actually the same endeavour, just looking in different places.
leoh 14y ago
I feel the same way about projects looking into habitation of foreign planets. The science and the engineering behind the endeavor is interesting, but why seriously not start thinking about and practicing sustainability in places like Antarctica?
- s-v 14y ago
  Colonizing another planet is a hedge against a destructive event (asteroid, bomb, etc) completely extinguishing the human species.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    Colonizing another planet would be a speciating event. Alpha Centurians would become a different species anyway, just like a population of birds that gets stranded on a remote island becomes a different species.
eri 14y ago
I think what really excites most people about SETI is not just the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, but extraterrestrial life that's more advanced than we are. Not sure what 'advanced' means though :)
jasonzemos 14y ago
This is a healthy sentiment that shows respect for the otherness of the other. I do think SETI is still necessary only because the empirical platform that all life shares is universal -- the radio spectrum, physics -- it's the same for all species. But this thread still clearly deserves some quotes from Stanislaw Lem: "We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos." "We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds."
InclinedPlane 14y ago
An intelligent species is different from a technological one, by a huge magnitude. That's not to say that dolphins aren't worthwhile to communicate with but there will never be a dolphin shakespeare, or pythagoras, or einstein, or da vinci. The options for being able to communicate with a technological species are astronomically greater than with a non-technological intelligent species.
martingoodson 14y ago
SETI are one of the biggest supporters of research into dolphin vocalisations. Laurance Doyle, who is at SETI, is one of the pioneers of the field. http://www.tusker.com/tusker-trips/eclipse-trips/archaeo/art.SetiNews.cfm http://www.tusker.com/tusker-trips/eclipse-trips/archaeo/art...

acheron 14y ago

"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars, and so on -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons." -- Douglas Adams

AlexanderDhoore 14y ago
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
cpeterso 14y ago
Another science-fiction series about dolphins is David Brin's Uplift books. Humans use genetic engineering to "uplift" dolphins' and chimpanzees' intelligence. Then they all fly around in water-filled spaceships "manned" by dolphin crews. :D

srean 14y ago

They are also known to build difficult to make toys (air bubble vortex rings) to entertain themselves. They have to discover how to make it. Sometimes they can be quite possessive, they would break the toy if someone not so knowledgeable wants to play with it. Once a dolphin figures it out how to make one, his/her peers eventually figure it out too. So it kind of spreads within a group like fashion. This behavior has been observed both in captivity and in the wild. https://www.google.com/search?q=dolphin+vortex+ring https://www.google.com/search?q=dolphin+vortex+ring (a time sink right here) They also have what appears to be fratricide were they bludgeon another to death targeting vital organs (I dont have a reference to this, but I recall reading it on BBC). I have seen dumber people on and around TV. I am sure there are HN'ers who are divers and have first had experience with dolphins, we would love to hear the stories.

prawn 14y ago
I wonder if there is a wider gap between the smartest and dumbest humans, and the equivalent extremes in other species? At our best, we accomplish astonishing things that melt brains to consider. However, the worst of us really are little more than what they would call (with derision) "animals", responding to base urges and the like, but dangerous, vindictive and controlling.
- bilbo0s 14y ago
  "...dangerous, vindictive and controlling..." I think the low end of human "intelligence" is something other than what you are talking about here. I think the low end of human "intelligence" would generally be associated with something more akin to mental retardation. Whereas what you're pointing out is more... like the behavior of a sociopath. Dangerous, vindictive and controlling is not a sign of a lack of intelligence... in fact... it's probably the opposite I would imagine.
  - ekianjo 14y ago
    > Dangerous, vindictive and controlling is not a sign of a lack of intelligence... in fact... it's probably the opposite I would imagine. I am not sure I understand why you think this way.

mtgx 14y ago

Have they tried testing this on dogs, too? I assume they don't do that, but it would be interesting if they did the test on dogs, too.

ricardobeat 14y ago
And ferrets.

gruseom 14y ago

John Lilly, who spent years working with dolphins, believed that they were smart enough to be cute and friendly to humans because they understood how dangerous we were.

pvaldes 14y ago
Not necessarily. Most of the time the people think about how cute is a dolphin is misunderstanding the animal. If a Lion shows you the teeth, you don't think is a cute kitty, is angry!, but, hey, this dolphin that show us the teeth "is smiling"!. This "smile" is in fact an agressive display in the wild. Being faster, well armed, and better fitted for water, a dolphin can avoid dangerous humans in the water any time he wants. In fact a lot of alone exemplars search for company, actively, even if is from humans, and are curious. Some dolphins simply like the human company, or the benefits derived of this, other not... at all.
- mjmahone17 14y ago
  On the other hand, animals that are domesticated become "cuter." Look at the Russian fox domestication program (and the mirror aggressiveness program). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox These foxes actually share a good number of features with dogs and humans: it may be that, because dolphins are such social creatures, we perceive them as cute because they are more or less domesticated.
  - icegreentea 14y ago
    A suspected reason why domesticated animals cuter is the ideal that traits that are typically selected are traits found in youth. The general term for this is neoteny [1], which is where youthful traits are held on to into adult life. Typical traits selected for are reduced aggression and increased docility. The hypothesis is that the animals that displayed these traits likely also had a variety of other relatively child-like traits, such as larger heads, larger foreheads (I guess this might be why dolphins look so darn cute), larger eyes, floppy ears, and etc - on the basis that the set of genes that control the development of adult traits are typically linked together. The result being that as we selected for the tamest animals, we also selected those that were cuter. It's kind of circular in that traits that make things cute are typically those that are found as young - the young form of most animals sharing the same general 'cute' features. One thing of note is that the concept of neoteny is often invoked to explain how humans diverged so rapidly from the other primates. If you accept that explanation, and take the idea a bit further, then you end up with a somewhat bizarre and perhaps disturbing idea that humans are actually the result of self-domesticating primates (obviously a gross over simplification... but kind of a fun thought to play around with). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny

ricardobeat 14y ago

“Hey everybody! I’m an adult healthy male named George, and I mean you no harm!” That would be more like "Hey everyone, I'm George". Humans also 'encode' information in that sense - from that introduction you could probably tell age, general health and friendliness. The day we can talk to any stranger dolphin and have a real conversation will be alike to contacting alien life.

javajosh 14y ago
>The day we can talk to any stranger dolphin and have a real conversation will be alike to contacting alien life. Actually, I don't think it will be all that alien. The conversation will probably be quite understandable. You will get conversations about fishing, who's pregnant, who you want to make pregnant, how your kids are doing, the temperature of the water, where the predators are. They probably tell stories, but they will be quite understandable to us. Fundamentally it's because the basic constraints of their lives are just like ours: get raised by mom, have friends, learn to hunt, mate, avoid predators and have fun while you can!
ChrisCooper 14y ago
Very true. On that topic, "...these communications consist of whistles, not words." Not to suggest that they're actually speaking a language, but a language consisting of whistles could still easily contain words. It would just have a different set of sounds.
- kaybe 14y ago
  It's not like it would be a new concept to humankind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistle_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistle_language

felideon 14y ago

After some rabbit hole googling related to my 'Seaquarium' digression below, I encountered this 2010 transcript[1] of an ex-Flipper trainer: "Flipper was a wild animal that lived in Biscayne Bay before we captured her and dragged her, kicking and screaming, to the Miami Seaquarium and put her in a tank and gave her a stage name, Flipper. Her name was really Cathy. Well, not really. Her real name was [whistles]. Dolphins have a signature whistle that their mother gives them." - Ric O'Barry So it seems like this research proves what dolphin trainers have known, ostensibly, for many years? [1] http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_try_to_save_dolphins http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_t... ====== OT: > The researchers also intensely studied four captive adult male dolphins housed at The Seas Aquarium, also in Florida. Made me giggle. Don't they mean, the [Miami] Seaquarium? If so, Flipper[1][2] is part of the study! [1] http://miamiseaquarium.com/Shows/Flipper-Dolphin http://miamiseaquarium.com/Shows/Flipper-Dolphin [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipper_(1964_TV_series)#Filming_locations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipper_(1964_TV_series)#Filmin...

pg 14y ago

Someone should define a canonical way to transform dolphins' whistles into syllables. Then we could at least sort of refer to them by their names.

felideon 14y ago
Apparently, dolphin trainers have the ability to whistle their names: "Her name was really Cathy. Well, not really. Her real name was [whistles]."[1] [1] http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_try_to_save_dolphins http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_t...
- aendruk 14y ago
  54:33
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    Thank you.
    - felideon 14y ago
      Maybe it wasn't entirely obvious, but there is a transcript at the bottom.
nickpinkston 14y ago
I'm also sure we could make a sort of pin-yin conversion system for said syllables to make a pseudo-pronunciation.
Tekker 14y ago
Then we could build it into Unicode!
tokipin 14y ago
then we could take the next step(s) and build a translator!

Viruptc 14y ago

Unbelievable that humans still kill these amazing animals http://www.seashepherd.org/cove-guardians/ http://www.seashepherd.org/cove-guardians/

tsieling 14y ago
Well, people kill people, too. But I agree with the underlying sentiment that we should be taking their place in the world much more seriously than we do most other animals.
gnarbarian 14y ago
Well we kill each other more, but dolphins are much more cute.

javajosh 14y ago

I will wager money that their names translate to things like: Big nose Funny tail Horny boy Big mamma Deep swimmer Not just amusing, but also useful. By correlating individual behaviors and physical features with names, we might be able to unlock dolphin language! Which would be incredible!

alan_cx 14y ago
Great idea. We humans were named after many characteristics. Jobs, what we see when the child is born, what kinds of personality we want our children to have, etc.

maxharris 14y ago

I think it's a mistake to say that they call each other by "name," because that implies the ability to form concepts/speak a language, and there is absolutely zero evidence for that. Even the article is careful to point that out: While researchers often hesitate to apply the “l word” -- language -- to non-human communications, bottlenose dolphins and possibly other dolphin species clearly have a very complex and sophisticated communication system.

crucialfelix 14y ago
Very true. Its an anthropomorphism. Its much more interesting to learn what cultural and communication structures they do use. Not to try to turn them into cartoons or easily human-digestible concepts.
wfn 14y ago
Depends on your definition of 'name' and your system/formalization of the act of reference and/or semantics. In this case, 'name' seems to mean 'proper name', and there are systems explaining proper names as symbols used to refer, but not to carry semantic charge (whatever that would entail). For example in my native tongue many town names are named after rivers large and small that do - or - only used to flow next to / past those towns. Yet we don't suddenly change the proper name: the reference still works, but we do not need to cognize the semantic contents (originally associated with the name, if that was the case anyway; if you know where Baroomghtown is, I can use the term to refer to it and my reference will succeed as it were). That was a mouthful. My (insignificant) point: perhaps they would only need cognitive machinery for referring to (in some simple(?) sense) / distinguishing between themselves. That is: (1) usage of proper names does not (necessarily) imply ability to speak a language (perhaps that's all I meant; talk about nitpicking..); (2) there's quite a lot of research showing that animals form concepts left and right (could dig something up, but googling under those keywords would yield enough). Consider this interesting report: Under Pepperberg’s patient tutelage, Alex [a parrot] learned how to use his vocal tract to imitate almost one hundred English words, including the sounds for all of these foods, although he calls an apple a “banerry.” “Apples taste a little bit like bananas to him, and they look a little bit like cherries, so Alex made up that word for them,” Pepperberg said. (NGM, 2008: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal-minds/virginia-morell-text http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal-minds... (a curious article)) So it might be possible to conceive of a schema such that [arbitrary symbols (sequences of syllables, etc.)] + [concepts] => proper names; and those would indeed be what we are used to calling 'proper names', a subset of the category denoted by 'names', not something else. However, I agree completely with the sentiments re: fears of (over-)anthropomorphizing and projecting our own 'theories of mind' onto other life.

rwhitman 14y ago

I bet there would be economic opportunity in developing commercial dolphin-human communication software and interfaces. Imagine how much benefit to deep sea construction and exploration there would be if training and employing dolphins using natural language was possible. Or to shipping, fishing etc.

WiseWeasel 14y ago
Dolphin-based sitcoms where the dolphin says "it's a living" and shrugs his dolphin shoulders.
- krapp 14y ago
  When we uplift them, we'll have to remember to give them shoulders. And eyebrows. Good comedy depends on eyebrows.

crucialfelix 14y ago

I went through a Cetacean and cephalopods obsession last year. What really freaks me out is what Dolphins looked like when they were still land animals: http://understanddolphins.tripod.com/dolphinevolution.html http://understanddolphins.tripod.com/dolphinevolution.html Also the perceptual systems of octopus and squid are amazing. Cuttlefish can perceive the polarization of light. This helps for contrast and edge detection. Many Cephalopods (octopuses, squid, cuttlefish) can see with their arms and then replay the image on the other side like a video screen. Dolphins can tell the difference between a quarter and a dime from 100m away using sonar. The click generating system emanates from the top of their head, in the area of the third chakra. We have a very limited sense of space and an all too focused sense of self. But we have a lot of oil and we can dig shit up and drive around real fast and think we are really important.

stcredzero 14y ago
> What really freaks me out is what Dolphins looked like when they were still land animals I took a look at that picture, then imagined the creature sniggering like Mutley from those old Hanna Barbera cartoons.
knowaveragejoe 14y ago
> We have a very limited sense of space and an all too focused sense of self. But we have a lot of oil and we can dig shit up and drive around real fast and think we are really important. We can also appreciate these things as no other species on Earth can, to the best of our knowledge.
bmuon 14y ago
Go hang around sea lions next time. Their social structure is a lot of fun to watch and they really look like water-oriented dogs.

mxfh 14y ago

The full paper is available for free from the Royal Society B: Vocal copying of individually distinctive signature whistles in bottlenose dolphins http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1757/20130053.full http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1757/2013... The orginal press release is here: http://www.smru.st-and.ac.uk/newsItem.aspx?ni=1611 http://www.smru.st-and.ac.uk/newsItem.aspx?ni=1611 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-21507301 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-21...

stcredzero 14y ago

> Bottlenose dolphins call out the specific names of loved ones when they become separated, a study finds. ...Holy, f^~kin crap! We've been in the presence of other sentients this whole time. Enslaved them. Killed them while gathering food. Holy, f^~kin crap!

noonespecial 14y ago
Its an uneasy thought to have that sentience might not be a binary function that humans have and other species lack. It might be a continuum. Some animals are far more sentient than others. Its followed closely by the even more uncomfortable thought that this might vary greatly inside the species. Finally this eerie train of thought pulls into the last station and you think that if the above is true than its almost certain that some humans are less sentient than others. There be dragons.
- pyre 14y ago
  Well, you could take that as "less sentient humans should be treated like animals and abused/treated like property/eaten." On the other hand, you could take it as: - Maybe I shouldn't eat all / some animals. - Maybe some / all animals should have more rights and not be treated as objects, but living beings. [Not to mention the Christian fundamentalists that will refer to the Bible stating that God gave man domain over animals, so things like lighting cats on fire for fun are ok.]
- scotty79 14y ago
  I totally agree on non-binary sentience. I think level of sentience correlates with capacity to experience dreams. I think cats and dogs and even smaller animals are somewhat sentient because they dream. What's more interesting, what level of sentience could be achieved with brain that has lot more power than human brain?
UnFleshedOne 14y ago
We've been constantly killing and enslaving sentients while gathering food and resources ever since humans became sentient themselves. Still do. On the other hand, one could say that a species killing and exploiting their own is internal problem of that species, while doing that to another intelligent species is morally worse on some level.

leoh 14y ago

Last year around this time, I had the opportunity to interact with two dolphins in captivity. Being with them, they felt so present and warm, like being around a perceptive old friend. I had never had that experience with an animal before, except fellow humans. It's something I will never forget.

dfc 14y ago
I take it that you are not a dog person?
- leoh 14y ago
  Recently my family got a dog. Love him. But his presence and awareness is very different.

wfn 14y ago

I referred to this NGM article in another sub-parent comment here, but I think it contains very relevant on-topic animal intelligence language-related insights, so posting a link and a couple of short excerpts from it here: Under Pepperberg’s patient tutelage, Alex [a parrot] learned how to use his vocal tract to imitate almost one hundred English words, including the sounds for all of these foods, although he calls an apple a “banerry.” “Apples taste a little bit like bananas to him, and they look a little bit like cherries, so Alex made up that word for them,” Pepperberg said. [...] [...] because Alex was able to produce a close approximation of the sounds of some English words, Pepperberg could ask him questions about a bird’s basic understanding of the world. She couldn’t ask him what he was thinking about, but she could ask him about his knowledge of numbers, shapes, and colors. To demonstrate, Pepperberg carried Alex on her arm to a tall wooden perch in the middle of the room. She then retrieved a green key and a small green cup from a basket on a shelf. She held up the two items to Alex’s eye. “What’s same?” she asked. Without hesitation, Alex’s beak opened: “Co-lor.” “What’s different?” Pepperberg asked. “Shape,” Alex said. Article: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal-minds/virginia-morell-text http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal-minds...

the_gipsy 14y ago
From that excerpt, all the parrot can tell is if two objects are the same color or not.
- wfn 14y ago
  Not really: the parrot must have an internal representation of 'color' as something (a concept / quality) that can be had and shared between things. It (hm, s/he) must therefore understand that it is (it must represent it as) an abstract quality in the sense that it can be had by different things (likewise with 'shape'). Well so what? This entails (I would argue) that it has the capacity to store and operate on abstract things (more or less the definition of 'symbol') - and in this very sense, the parrot has the faculty for symbolic processing/operations. Not only does it extract properties from sensory data and generalize them into concepts (things can be wibbly-wobbly-in-way-A, or wibbly-wobbly-in-way-B (first order of abstraction (well, n+1 really)) => things have wibbliness, and some things have the same kind of wibbliness (second order (or n+2))), but also, it may operate on these concepts and use them in assertion/negation propositions: some objects have the same color but not the same shape. (I use the term proposition in the more general logical sense, not necessarily as in 'a linguistic assertion'; but when asked, the parrot provides an answer that can be put in a truth-table so to speak.) Interestingly, that's one of the ways to actually define 'semantic content': something which provides truth-conditions (e.g. some language-formalizing systems would say that the proposition "The present King of France is bald" has no semantic content / has no meaning because it is neither true nor false (presently there is no King in France, and the reference fails) (though Russell would disagree ('how can it be neither true nor false?') (if interested: "On Denoting", 1905.)) So what #2? Well, one could argue that symbolic apparatus + semantics (a set of truth-functions / grounds for constructing them) => 'language', so it's kind of a big thing, I'd say. (At the very least, evidence towards abstract thought in animals is always somehow very interesting for me.) Again: symbols (abstracting from properties => projecting these abstracts back onto sensory data) + symbolic processing (basically, ability to ascribe truth/falsity to/via them) => darn interesting. There's a whole hot debate how/whether this can be achieved 'bottom-up' from neural networks (Connectionism) (is 'symbolic processing' the proper way of reduction? Even if cognition is 'symbolic' in the end, perhaps it is best to model this starting bottom-up and arriving at 'symb.processing' as an emergent/epiphenomenal capacity?) - or, whether you need 'innate capacity' for symbolic processing / language ('language genes') - top-bottom language faculties (that all add up to those same neural networks, but simply, you won't get much by starting bottom-up) (Classicism / Nativism (not really interchangeable, using loosely / generalizing, etc.)) (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/#ConDeb http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/#ConDeb , http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/connectionism/#ShaConBetConCla http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/connectionism/#ShaConBetCo... , etc.) </convoluted comment> edit fixed and added even more confusing stuff.

rblion 14y ago

Did you know that dolphins love to rape each other and some have tried to rape a human?! Check out this list of interesting facts... http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-6-badass-facts-you-never-knew-about-dolphins http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-6-badass-facts-you...

westicle 14y ago
It's amazing how similar they are to humans in many respects.
- rblion 14y ago
  It is. Highly intelligent, playful, social, strategic, sexual, and with bursts of aggression.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

Because I ended up doing a bit of reading about dolphins earlier this week, I thought I'd share a bit of trivia in this thread: dolphins also have prehensile penises. (Like an elephant's nose) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1l9V6Lfe2uE http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1... And they're also not-very-nice (Tongue firmly in cheek here. Of course animals do not possess human qualities like "nice" or "asinine") http://deepseanews.com/2013/02/10-reasons-why-dolphins-are-aholes/ http://deepseanews.com/2013/02/10-reasons-why-dolphins-are-a... Now that we know they have names and are able to make tools, this has to make them one of the most unique species on the planet aside from man. Wonder what would have happened had they just invented some form of writing?

scotty79 14y ago
I think we eat them not the other way around only because underwater is a crappy place to develop multi-generational culture. You need surfaces you can draw your symbols on and appendages that can manipulate things while looking at them. I don't feel that I'm member of the best species on earth. Just the one that is ahead in the race but only by a very thin margin. Fortunately we reached "writing" and "science" checkpoints first which means that we effectively won.

dchichkov 14y ago

As far as I know Royal Penguins also can call each other by name. And can distinguish a call from afar in the noise of hundreds of other penguins calling each other. There must be a lot of redundancy in the call, I guess. Also penguins sound totally like one of these old 14400 baud modems ;)

ttar 14y ago

Dolphin language is similar to human language. http://www.tusker.com/tusker-trips/eclipse-trips/archaeo/art.SetiNews.cfm http://www.tusker.com/tusker-trips/eclipse-trips/archaeo/art...

traughber 14y ago

Growing up, I was lucky enough to occasionally join a group of scientists aboard a research vessel off the northern tip of the Bahamas. We would spend hours a day and up to two weeks at a time on the open ocean swimming with them and making visual and audio recordings of their behavior. The species they study are Atlantic Spotted Dolphins (Stenella frontalis). One of the things that has always struck me about them is how social they are – they have social circles and "cliques", similar to humans. We would observe these social networks and monitor how they change over the years. This research project is unique because they've been following this same group of just a few hundred dolphins in the wild for over 25 years. Having watched video and high frequency audio recordings of them interacting with one another in the wild, it comes as no surprise that they have "names" for one another. Relatedly, Denise Herzing, the founder of that organization (the Wild Dolphin Project) will be speaking at TED this year (see Session 8, "Coded Meaning"): http://conferences.ted.com/TED2013/program/guide.php http://conferences.ted.com/TED2013/program/guide.php Here's their site: http://www.wilddolphinproject.org/about-us/mission-vision/ http://www.wilddolphinproject.org/about-us/mission-vision/

tomasien 14y ago

Did anyone else's pulse race when they saw the phrase "encodes other information"?

ComputerGuru 14y ago

Any thread on dolphins is not complete without a link to the 1992 NYT article on dolphins: [http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/18/science/dolphin-courtship-brutal-cunning-and-complex.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/18/science/dolphin-courtship-...] Here's the sad part: none of this is new. 1992. 1992. Over twenty years ago. As children they make a best friend for life, they form complicated alliances for mutual benefit, they form political alliances/gangs, they help each other out both tit-for-tat and "pro-bono" while keep score of debts (I help you today, you will owe me at some undefined point in the future), they group together to accomplish tasks (sometimes/often at the expense of other dolphins, for instance a female they are trying to get with). Another important study was done to research the presence (or lack thereof) of a universal dolphin "language" (EDIT: found source! [http://wakeup-world.com/2011/11/28/the-discovery-of-dolphin-language/ http://wakeup-world.com/2011/11/28/the-discovery-of-dolphin-...] but not peer reviewed research). It involved showing dolphins in one aquarium a sequence of objects (red ball, green box, etc.) and recording the sounds made, then travelling to another aquarium with dolphins that have never been in contact with the first and playing back the sounds made, then watching the dolphins "locate" or "identify" the object the sounds were made in response to. They achieved an astonishing (if memory serves!) 86% accuracy rate implying audible descriptions of objects, much in the same manner that a "bee dance" can be universally understood across hives/colonies except it's based on actual sounds rather than movements.</cannot find source> Regardless of whether or not you feel dolphins deserve the title of "non-human sentient beings" (whatever "sentient" means, it's such a non-word), I think anyone involved in the mass slaughter of dolphins in an attempt to ransom money should be imprisoned for being a killer (Reference: 900 dolphins killed in Solomon Islands as black mail for raise in pay negotiations. Sorry, but f* them [ http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10861279 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&... ])

PostOnce 14y ago
That article says they use dolphins for meat and income. It seems a little easy to sit in an armchair next to a fridge full of supermarket-bought food and complain about what islanders do to eat. Presumably, the money they claim they weren't paid would've been used on other sources of food, and when unpaid, went back to what they were doing before, with a little extra effort to piss off the non payers.

olejolej 14y ago

Like in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams :) Dolphins will govern...

lignuist 14y ago

I wonder, if there is any public repository of dolphin audio recordings.