Can Dolphins Talk to Us?
Dolphins are well-known for their graceful movements and shiny skin, but they also seem to have a knack for communicating with each other. They do this through sounds, body posture and taste. While their language remains a mystery, it’s still incredibly interesting to watch these animals interact with humans.
CAN DOLPHINS TALK TO US?
Many humans enjoy swimming alongside dolphins at aquariums and on vacation. Some even take trips to see them in the wild. But the real interest for scientists lies in their communication skills.
One of the most fascinating things about dolphins is that they communicate a range of signals to each other, including whistles and clicks.
These are all based on acoustic information that’s picked up by their ears and transmitted to their brains. This means that dolphins can tell if someone is in danger, for example. It also allows them to send messages about food or other dolphins they’re interested in, as well as where to find an object in the water that might be important for survival.
The problem, however, is that dolphins don’t open their mouths when they “talk” and their acoustic signals are hard to track with a traditional underwater microphone. So researchers have been looking for ways to capture their sound signals in a way that’s more precise and more reliable.
In this study, a team of researchers in France used five hydrophones to create a star-shaped pattern that can detect which dolphin in a group is making the loudest noise. The ethologist Juliana Lopez-Marulanda says the approach can be useful for tracking dolphins when they’re swimming together, so they can identify if one of them is “speaking” to the others.
They also discovered that dolphins use vocal signals when completing cooperative tasks, which require two dolphins to press buttons at the same time while staying within a few seconds of each other, whether or not they can see their partner.
When the task got more difficult, the two dolphins still worked as a team and pressed their buttons within the same tempo, regardless of whether they were sent together or separated by more than 10 meters.
While the scientists didn’t get the answer they were looking for, the findings do show that dolphins do work together when completing a task.
What they found, as reported in Behavioural Processes, was that bottlenose dolphins used vocal signals to help synchronize their actions during a cooperative task. This involved a series of trials in which they had to press their buttons at the same time, and within a few seconds of each other, if they wanted to receive a reward.
The researchers discovered that dolphins actively swam in close proximity to each other when they did this, which was more likely to make them successful. This was because they were able to detect when their partner had stopped propelling them forward and was starting to wait for them, even though the two animals were separated by more than 10 meters.
