Dolphins Recorded Having a Conversation For The First Time (telegraph.co.uk) 305
For the first time Russian researchers have recorded a conversation between two dolphins -- Yasha and Yana -- who were talking to each other in a pool. An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes The Telegraph:
Scientists developed an underwater microphone which could distinguish the animals' different "voices" [and] have now shown that dolphins alter the volume and frequency of pulsed clicks to form individual "words" which they string together into sentences in much the same way that humans speak...
"This language exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language, this indicates a high level of intelligence and consciousness in dolphins, and their language can be ostensibly considered a highly developed spoken language, akin to the human language... Humans must take the first step to establish relationships with the first intelligent inhabitants of the planet Earth by creating devices capable of overcoming the barriers that stand in the way of using languages and in the way of communications between dolphins and people."
The dolphins listened to an entire "sentence" before replying, according to the article, which points out that dolphin brains are larger and more complex than the brains of humans.
"This language exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language, this indicates a high level of intelligence and consciousness in dolphins, and their language can be ostensibly considered a highly developed spoken language, akin to the human language... Humans must take the first step to establish relationships with the first intelligent inhabitants of the planet Earth by creating devices capable of overcoming the barriers that stand in the way of using languages and in the way of communications between dolphins and people."
The dolphins listened to an entire "sentence" before replying, according to the article, which points out that dolphin brains are larger and more complex than the brains of humans.
Dolphin deciphering (Score:3)
Gary Larson's take [browardschools.com] on dophin deciphering.
Re:Dolphin deciphering (Score:5, Funny)
After deciphering, they will find out that they were saying:
- I think they are on to us.
- Yes, perhaps it's time to search for another planet.
Re:Dolphin deciphering (Score:5, Funny)
What they're actually saying, of course, is "So long, and thanks for all the fish".
Re:Dolphin deciphering (Score:5, Informative)
There are examples of complex behavior in cetaceans that would be difficult to explain without assuming they can communicate. Here is a video [youtube.com] of orcas (which are technically dolphins) using a complex coordinated activity to isolate and capture a crabeater seal. But that isn't even the most interesting part: First the adults perform the actions, while the junenile orcas watch, then they let the seal recover and climb back onto the ice. Then the juveniles give it a go. They screw it up. Then the adults go again, showing them how to do it right. The the juveniles try again. How could they do that without being about to "talk"?
Re:Dolphin deciphering (Score:5, Insightful)
You already showed how they do it: the parents/elder shows how to do it and the kids learn. That is also a form of communication but doesn't give evidence for any kind of conversations as such.
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Nope they have an evolutionary bias to speaking. That bias is driven by their sonar detection. Think of a group hunting together, not only can they hear their own sonar, they can hear the rest of the groups sonar, not just the orgin but reflected sound, so full 3D sonar shared by that whole group, with knowledge of the sources. You should be able to figure out how that would develop into speech ie simple reproduction of the echoes produced from default sonar patterns. So it would be quite a different langu
Re:Dolphin deciphering (Score:5, Informative)
There are very few universally understood words or gestures in humans, displaying the palms of your hands to say "I mean no harm" is the only example I can think of but there are probably more. Humans, dolphins, apes, and a few other creatures are known to have "culture", there is variation in the social behaviour and vocalisations of groups. People have been trying to crack dolphin language for decades under the unspoken assumption that all dolphins speak the same dialect/language. Maybe dolphin language will turn out to be as flexible and culturally varied as humans but this article tells me we still don't have a clue what they are talking about.
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Most land based predators and birds teach their young how to hunt in a similar way
No they don't. You obviously didn't watch the video. This isn't mommy teaching baby how to kill, in a one-on-one lesson. It is an entire group performing a complicated coordinated action, to teach another group.
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Re: Doll. Fin. (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't that an Americanism, i.e. optional?
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Isn't that an Americanism, i.e. optional?
I've read originally, in handwriting, the punctuation used to come below the quotation mark, both forming what nowadays would be considered a single character. When people transitioned to print, there was no easy way to do that, so some began placing the punctuation before the quotation mark, others began placing the quotation mark before the punctuation, and over time either style became the standard in print. Most countries went for quotation-then-punctuation. The USA went for punctuation-then-quotation.
Re:Doll. Fin. (Score:4, Informative)
You'd better hope they don't eliminate people who don't know that the terminating period for that sentence belongs inside the quotes, sparky. :)
The position of a period relative to an ending quote mark depends on which country you speak (or learned) English in.
Re:Doll. Fin. (Score:5, Informative)
Literally every other source I bothered to look at (all American style guides) say the period (or comma) goes inside the quote unless there is a parenthetical citation, in which case it follows that. After a dozen or so sources, I gave up on trying to find one representing a country other than the US; if anyone can provide me one or more, that would be greatly appreciated.
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Re:Doll. Fin. (Score:5, Informative)
How's this?
From http://www.thepunctuationguide... [thepunctuationguide.com]
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It's to support legacy hardware.
Printing presses using physical typeset would have problems with a tiny period or comma in the middle of open space (away from text and under the quote marks) - it would tear paper or break off the typeset. The get around that, they moved the dot closer to other text - to the left of the quote mark.
Somehow that hack implemented for hardware support changed the language structure to become official, even though that's not logical or even the original standard.
Think of it as a
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Between the French and American revolutions there was a whole lot of symbolic "Insult the monarchy" bullshit that got made into traditions by deliberately changing what has come before. Some places embraced these, others kicked back hard against them. America did a lot of that with punctuation and spelling for example, but the pattern goes much wider - so for example about half the world is left-hand-drive and the other half is right-hand-drive, mostly because the French revolutionaries changed which side o
Re:Doll. Fin. (Score:4, Funny)
printf("why would that bother you?);"
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Learning the American style of trying to stuff all punctuation inside quotes always seemed like a sort of madness to me.
Here is an interesting read [lowendmac.com] that might broaden your stylo-linguistic horizons.
There are so many instances when placing punctuation outside the quotation punctuation makes infinitely more sense, 'style guides' be damned.
Re:Doll. Fin. (Score:4, Funny)
No it does not. The period is for the whole sentence, which is not a quote. The quoted words are just a list.
No, quoted words are a string. The end of a list can be implicit, or if the list has only one element, you can denote it with a trailing comma.
Or were we not talking about python?
Re: Dolphin deciphering (Score:3)
Is that how it works? It's not like it was a culturally event and you had to be there to really get it. Most people who have read it probably did so since then since it's a classic. If someone hasn't heard of Shakespeare's Coriolanus you don't say "Ah, you're younger than 400, aren't you?"
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After deciphering, they will find out that they were saying:
- I think they are on to us.
- Yes, perhaps it's time to search for another planet.
- Before we go, we should say goodbye
- And thank them for the fish
Re:Dolphin deciphering (Score:4, Funny)
The dolphins listened to an entire "sentence" before replying, according to the article, which points out that dolphin brains are larger and more complex than the brains of humans.
Perhaps the are saying...
-Did you notice how rude those humans are?
-Yes, they don't even let each other finish a sentence.
So, you wanna eat fish tonight? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah.
Fact (Score:2, Funny)
Dolphins are actually ancient aliens.
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Indeed, and all the fossils showing their evolution here were cleverly embedded into the existing fossil record in order to hide the truth! Sneaky aliens...
What's with the quotes? (Score:4)
Also, thumbs up to the editor for the last line there. I laughed, ruefully.
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"Imma let you finish, but I just wanna say that Bayern Sea has the best fish of all time."
A nod to Christopher Molasante (Score:2)
"You're trying to insight dysentery among the fishes, aren't ya?"
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"I had some great fish last night" (Score:5, Funny)
Dolphin 1: I know where we can get some really good fish.
Dolphin 2: Sounds great! Why don't I go get Doris, you talk to Sheila, and we can go there and make a night of it?
Dolphin 1: Works for me. Wanna grab some mackerel afterward?
Dolphin 2: It's like you read my mind!
Dolphin 1: Hey, who's the pink dork with the microphone?
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Killer wales also talk. Goes something like this:
KW 1: I know where we can get some really tasty dolphins.
KW 2: Sounds great! Why don't I go get Doris, you talk to Sheila, and we can go there and make a night of it?
KW 1: Works for me. Wanna grab some sea lions afterward?
KW 2: It's like you read my mind!
KW 1: Hey, who's the pink dork with the microphone?
WK 2: Dinner!
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I seem to recall that orcas generally avoid hunting other dolphins and whales unless other food is scarce. Admittedly an increasingly common situation as humanity strip-mines the seas, but still - if they're hungry enough to hunt cousins it's because there aren't any sea lions or fish around.
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Actually, orcas have preferences. For example, our resident orca pods generally eat fish only (salmon preferentially). However, the transient pods almost exclusively eat sea lions. I don't know if that's just how the po
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Dolphin 2: Lets rape him in Allah's name
Dogs too. (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a lot of language using animals which are not yet recognized. Humanity is just getting to the point of seeing that there are other intelligences here on Earth.
We have livestock working dogs. They exhibit a lot of language and string up to six words together, use adjectives and have names for each other, us and objects. We have about 300 words we use with them, both from us to them and them to us as well as what they use to each other. It is clear they have a lot more words they use with each other that I don't understand so their language is considerably more extensive than the smattering of pidgin we share.
Realize I'm not talking about Fluffy, a typical domesticated dog that was raised as a singleton isolated from other dog culture. These are livestock large working dogs that are far closer to their wolf ancestors and they grow up in a culturally rich environment of a many generational pack on our farm. They work for a living and know hundreds of individual livestock animals that they tend to on the farm.
Re:Dogs too. (Score:5, Informative)
Language has a rather specific meaning to scientists. There are any number of complex communication systems that are still not full language. For a communication system to be a language it must do more than simply transmit information; it must also be productive and capable of displacement. The article is paywalled Telegraph article, so I can't assess it directly, but unless researchers have determined that these key features are present, then while it may be a very complex communication system, it still wouldn't be language.
There have been a lot of false starts investigating the language capabilities like dolphins and apes. While they seem capable of some degree of language, some of the more incredible reports of advanced human-like language have often turned out to be more wishful thinking than fact.
Re:Dogs too. (Score:5, Informative)
The Telegraph has a link to the (seemingly very short) paper, which doesn't appear to be restricted: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405722316301177 [sciencedirect.com] Displacement and other aspects of language are discussed.
Is anyone here a Marine Biologist? (Score:2)
Between the Telegraph and Russia's online propaganda, I would expect Russia to make grand scientific claims and the Telegraph to sensationalize them.
Sad, given Russia has a history of being a leader in science, and England has a history of being a leader in journalism.
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Not at all. Nothing would please me more than animals besides H. sapiens possessing our linguistic capabilities. But sadly the history of animal linguistic research has had a few overly optimistic studies that turned up short.
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There are a lot of language using animals which are not yet recognized.
So how do you know about 'em?
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Cats. They can make over 100 different sounds and most impressively learn to talk to humans. They can communicate what they want and even manipulate humans into giving them what they want.
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Actually, they are much =further= from their wolf ancestors, which is why they guard your livestock rather than eat it. It's also why they pay attention to what the human says and does, which wolves are poor at but dogs (even dumb ones) excel at, since we've selected for that observatory-responsiveness to man for thousands of years. It is not a wild animal trait.
And as a pro dog trainer (working retrievers, which share a lot of DNA lineage with the guardian/working breeds of western Europe) it doesn't surpr
Re: Dogs too. (Score:2, Funny)
Cetaceans please.
citation (Score:2)
I believe he's referring to Matthew 8:28-34.
More seriously (Score:2)
It'd be mighty convenient that, if dolphins actually were to possess language skills, their language and conversation style would mimic that of humans so closely.
There were people who tried to claim similar things about apes for quite a while. They could even learn sign language! That finally (mostly) ended when researchers figured out that apes could learn about 300 words... Roughly the same as a dog.
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Where are you getting your information? Wikipedia says it's claimed that Koko the gorilla knows about 1000 words in sign, and understands about 2000 in English.
Bullshit-"science" (Score:2)
Statistical analysis demonstrated this long ago... (Score:5, Informative)
Back in the 70's and 80's, people recorded dolphin vocalizations, and identified the equivalent of human phonemes, basically just different sound patterns that would occur repeatedly. By collecting a lot of data, and counting up the occurrences of distinct phonemes, they were able to show a phoneme frequency that matches the exact same patterns as human speech (frequency here meaning how often a phoneme occurs, not the frequency of the sound waves).
For instance, "the" occurred 6 times in the paragraph above, "and" occurs 3 times, and words like "vocalization" occur once - far less often. All human languages have this distribution where a small quantity of words makes up the bulk of common conversation, whereas things like bird calls or other vocalizations from less intelligent species follow a more flat distribution.
The point being, we've known for a long time that dolphins communicate using something very similar to human speech. This is pretty neat progress, but IMO it's pretty disheartening that after several decades we're still not anywhere near understanding their language. If we can't figure out how to communicate with fellow mammals sharing a common lineage, it really challenges the common sci-fi trope of having any kind of meaningful discourse with a creature from the other side of the galaxy.
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To converse, both sides have to want to talk.
Dolphins show little or no interest in actually teaching us their language, so it's more akin to learning a dead language from the last native speaker - one who hates your guts. It's not simple thing.
Then there's the assumption that we can have any kind of meaningful discourse with them, that they think in any way similar to us. That's just unproven.
Then there's the assumption that just listening is enough to learn anything at all. Even listening-and-playing-b
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I believe you're confusing phonemes (distinctive sounds, like English 'p', 'u' etc.--the sounds, not the letters we use to represent them in writing) with morphemes and/or words. I don't know what study you're referring to, so I don't know which one you mean. But there's an awful lot of interpretation going on. With human speech, it's pretty well known what the range of variation in human languages is, and we can verify it by learning the language. (A similar story can be told for signed languages, writ
Two words: Rosetta Stone (Score:3)
This is pretty neat progress, but IMO it's pretty disheartening that after several decades we're still not anywhere near understanding their language. If we can't figure out how to communicate with fellow mammals sharing a common lineage, it really challenges the common sci-fi trope of having any kind of meaningful discourse with a creature from the other side of the galaxy.
The problem is context. You have to assume that a dolphin, if they have a language, has hundreds of words for fish. But without semantics, all you can do is guess. For all anyone knew, Egyptian's hieroglyphs were just pretty pictures till the Rosetta Stone came around. Even then it took 20 years before anyone could confidently say what were drawn on those walls. We still aren't confident on how you say some of the phonemes either. It could be a "finding out dinosaurs had feathers all this time" event.
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alto
It's kind of ironic that, in commenting on an article about language, you manage to typo a non-word.
Why not? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I've yet to witness three white mice torturing a black mouse to reveal the secret plot, patiently doling out the abuse, with here and there moments of silence to process the anguished shrieks.
language + politics = torture
Probably what dolphins are saying: I hope those slant-eyes get fished and eaten by the yellow people in those noisy tubs.
Can't build cities, but sure as hell can gossip about racial puri
Dolphins are arseholes (Score:4, Insightful)
Observation: Despite decades of human effort trying to decipher it, Dolphins have made no attempt to try to help us understand their language.
Conclusion: Dolphins don't actually want to talk to us.
Re:Dolphins are arseholes (Score:5, Funny)
Conclusion: Dolphins don't actually want to talk to us.
Hell, I don't want to talk to humans, but the Dolphin /. is just endless threads about swimming, fish, waves, bubbles, etc...
And don't get me started on their podcasts.
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>Conclusion: Dolphins don't actually want to talk to us.
Further proof of their intelligence.... :-D
Scientific breakthrough. (Score:2)
Brain to Robot Interface (Score:2)
Hook them up to a brain to robot interface complete with VR goggles .. maybe they can do the same things humans can. Maybe we can outsource work to them. I doubt there are any implications to doing something like that.
The conversation (in detail) (Score:4, Funny)
hey, so what happened to Fred again?
He tried that thing, you know, crawled out of the water to see if we could escape our aquatic existence.
WTF! To live with them??
Quit looking their way! Talk about something else! Uh, yeah, them tunas is great...er, mackerels, I mean...why are they still staring at us
dolphin brains are larger...than brains of humans. (Score:3)
The dolphins listened to an entire "sentence" before replying, according to the article, which points out that dolphin brains are larger and more complex than the brains of humans.
This is the best summary. My ex-girlfriend never listened to an "entire" sentence before replying. I need to start dating dolphins.
That's interesting (Score:2)
The dolphins listened to an entire "sentence" before replying, according to the article...
So, they're both males?
I'm not surprised (Score:2)
Human Language (Score:2)
The "dolphin language?" So what is the "human language." There isn't one. There is no species language. A language, as we understand it with mammals, is developed over generations, and taught from parent to child. So were these wild caught animals? From what pod? How big is that pod? These are the interesting questions.
I have the most complex brain (Score:3, Interesting)
And this is what they said (Score:2)
Good bye and thanks for all the fish.
The proper Douglas Adams quote on this (Score:2)
"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—whilst 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.”
42 !!! (Score:2)
for it is and always shall be...
Obligatory Far Side (Score:3)
Transcript (Score:2)
"Hey Dan"
"What"
"Remember what I told you?"
"About what"
"How to hold it"
"No"
"Laces out!"
"Yeah, yeah, got it. Laces out."
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It won't stop me from eating tuna (and I'm not a republican.)
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Maybe stop because of the slavery: http://www.alternet.org/labor/... [alternet.org]
That's not a problem with Tuna. It's a problem with protection of humans (and the lack thereof) by other humans.
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Dammit man, it's hard enough to find without you telling more people about its existence!
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American politics largely runs on that left-right axis because the effectively two party system forces everyone to either pick a side or be excluded from politics altogether.
Re:More complex? (Score:5, Informative)
Measuring a brain purely on size is very misleading. At least a fair portion of the relative size difference of brains in different species has to do with body size, perhaps because larger bodies have more sensory cells and larger numbers of nerves, which necessitate more basic processing power for sensory input, as well as sending commands to various parts of the nervous system. Where the brain is larger in comparison to body mass, there is a tendency to find more intelligent animals, so the key here, at least in part, is that ratio.
Re:More complex? (Score:4, Informative)
Measuring a brain purely on size is very misleading. At least a fair portion of the relative size difference of brains in different species has to do with body size, perhaps because larger bodies have more sensory cells and larger numbers of nerves, which necessitate more basic processing power for sensory input, as well as sending commands to various parts of the nervous system. Where the brain is larger in comparison to body mass, there is a tendency to find more intelligent animals, so the key here, at least in part, is that ratio.
This is probably to what you're referring: Encephalization quotient [wikipedia.org]
Encephalization quotient (EQ), or encephalization level, is a measure of relative brain size defined as the ratio between actual brain mass and predicted brain mass for an animal of a given size, which is hypothesized to be a rough estimate of the intelligence or cognition of the animal.
This is a more refined measurement than the raw brain-to-body mass ratio, as it takes into account allometric effects. The relationship, expressed as a formula, has been developed for mammals, and may not yield relevant results when applied outside this group.
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Brain surface area and cortical thickness seems to be more significant. The ability to measure surface area is improving (US National Institutes of Health PubMed):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... [nih.gov]
And the relationship to intelligence is an ongoing study. Here's one approach:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... [nih.gov]
As the Martian says, brain size can be a factor but it's complicated.
Re:More complex? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, not really. Among most species bigger brains = bigger neurons, so that the number of neurons increases far more slowly than you would expect. One of the major evolutionary leaps among primates was that neuron size remains relatively constant across species, so that larger primates have dramatically more neurons than their smaller cousins.
Which is largely responsible for the fact that, despite the fact that dolphins have larger brains than us, they have only ~20 blllion neurons, compared to our ~100 billion.
Re:More complex? (Score:4, Informative)
They also have a higher ratio of glial cells to neurons. This is probably an adaptation to maintain homoeostasis in an organism which can face very sudden transitions in environmental temperature and pressure.
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The brain size is easily examined by opening the skull and making some measurements with rulers and weighs.
The idea that brain size correlates with intelligence level held sway during the Victorian era... not so much now. However your point regarding the complexity required to manage "3D Sonar" is well made - but, unless we think they're doing manual calculations conciously in their heads, it's not really a proxy for intelligence.
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Because dolphins can misquote too.
A Kind Gesture (Score:5, Insightful)
They live in 3D, Mr Flatscreen. It's 3D gestures all the way down. Using wavefronts. The echoes of which they can reconstruct into 3D maps on the fly. Er, swim.
Cower before your superiors. Oh, wait, you can't -- no flippers. Also too slow. Limited range of hearing. Weak. Small.
Wow, you just suck.
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Re:They aren't that bad (Score:4, Funny)
We're talking about intelligent forms of life, not football players.