cetalingua

8 ms·

31.
by cetalingua 9y ago
When she died in 2014 Nellie (a bottlenose dolphin in Marineland) was 61. No one realy knows what is the maximum lifespan in the wild. Some bowhead whales have the lifespan over 200 years, and we know nothing about their self-recognition or
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by cetalingua 9y ago
In pygmy sperm whales, magnetite crystals appear to be concentrated in the rostroventral dura, but we know next to nothing about how they function or are used, let alone about how they are being formed.
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by cetalingua 9y ago
One of the most fascinating experiments was done by Bastian in 1960s (our first podcast will be about it once the site goes live). It remains highly controversial but has also been replicated by others. In 2016 one Russian scientist claimed
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by cetalingua 9y ago
Dolphins are truly fascinating creatures. They have extremely sophisticated brain architecture that definitely supports at least some degree of sentience. Some species like humpback whales, orcas (but curiously not Tursiops) have von Econom
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by cetalingua 9y ago
Well, they seem to not understand that they can jump over the net and escape the capture. They (wild cetaceans especially) are not very interested in establishing contact with another sentient species ( us). In all experiments on non-human
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The Great Silence by Ted Chiang(electricliterature.com)
2 points by cetalingua 9y ago|0 comments
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by cetalingua 9y ago
Our website (cetalingua.com) is still under construction, but you can sign up to be notified when it goes live.
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by cetalingua 9y ago
They just abandoned capture plans, only around 20-30 vaquitas remain, it is a truly devastating situation.
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by cetalingua 9y ago
Yes, absolutely, will email shortly.
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by cetalingua 9y ago
Our problem is that we have very limited imagination (and sensitivities) when interacting with other sentient beings even here, on earth. For example, cetaceans evolved in the environment where vision is limited. Hence, dolphins and whales
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by cetalingua 9y ago
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is controversial, but it is not dead as some try to suggest. See Regier & Xu (2017) or Cibelli et al. (2016)
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by cetalingua 9y ago
From the actual study: "Himba participants show categorical perception only for their own linguistic categories and not for either the supposed universal categories of English" Roberson, D., Davidoff, J., Davies, I. R., & Shap
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by cetalingua 9y ago
If you read the paper cited you will see it is even more dramatic than that: "Thus, the color-naming system of Waorani, like that of Karajá, does not fit the structure of perceptual color space. Although neither Waorani nor Karajá has
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by cetalingua 9y ago
Actually, this statement is not factually correct either. While there might be a debate about Himba tribe and colors, there are other tribes like Karajá and Waorani, as they both are counterexamples to universals of color naming, which coul
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by cetalingua 9y ago
Another fascinating topic is how our language determines how we see different colors. The Himba tribe does not distinguish between blue and green, but is able to discriminate among shades of green that basically look the same to us, Western
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by cetalingua 9y ago
Sleep is not just "reduced" cognition, it is an entirely different state all together. In sleep thalamus becomes a gatekeeper that makes sure that stimuli cannot get through (although the important ones still do, like a baby cry w
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by cetalingua 9y ago
Sleep is typically defined by the brain waves activities, delta waves, theta waves, etc., each corresponding to a specific sleep stage. These are physiological markers of sleep. There are also states of "quiet wakefulness" that sh
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by cetalingua 9y ago
What is even more interesting is why exactly do they "sleep" at night? Do they have some sort of circadian rhythm? They are filter feeders, so the time of the day should not be that important, after all they can filter feed at nig
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by cetalingua 9y ago
Our biggest problem which has not been solved yet is human inability to ask questions in non-anthropocentric way. For example, when we investigate self-awareness in dolphins we use mirrors (by the way, one recent project failed to replicate
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by cetalingua 9y ago
No,not exactly. There is a shortage of funding and also of creative approach. We cannot ask a question "are we alone" unless we know exactly what a whale sings about (if anything) or what crazy complicated dolphin or beluga chatte
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by cetalingua 9y ago
>Why are we here, and are we alone How about we first at least try to understand life on Earth? We are definitely not alone, there are other conscious beings on this planet. After decades of studies we still have no idea what a humpback
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by cetalingua 9y ago
You are absolutely right. In fact, multibeam sonar use for sea floor mapping was connected to a devastating mass stranding in Madagascar http://www.ifaw.org/united-states/news/whale-mass-stranding-...
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by cetalingua 9y ago
Physiological definition- unihemispheric slow wave sleep, EEG measures each hemisphere's activity, where the sleeping one shows low frequency, high amplitude EEG readings.This is stage 3 sleep. Birds and manatees have it too.
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by cetalingua 9y ago
No, actually it seems to enchance their abilities, one recent study discussed how dolphins can click and process received information while sleeping, or can use sonar to search for fish, make decisions about echoes received, while simultane