Dolphin utters 'word' for first time

ketsuko
reply to post by Gozer

 

There have also been some language analyses done on dolphin whistles and clicks that show that there is meaning to them. They aren't random sounds. We just don't know what they mean.

Exactly! They may not even use language in the same way we do. And to go deeper in speculation, they may have multiple ways/levels of communication. Their brains are insanely large for a dull fisk-like creature that just wants to eat fish and play all day, at least I think so. The higher thinking portion of their brains is very advanced similar to humans... but hard to know for certain what they use it for.

They are quick learners like primates and have good memory skills like elephants, i'd be really curious to see how many (and what type) chromosomes they have compared to apes and elephants too.

Really good movie on the topic of dolphins is "the Cove" and goes into the topic of Flipper some and the misuse of these curious species, but be warned it's very graphic and it very well might hurt you emotionally to watch. Also "Blackfish" is pretty informative about how they train whales, and how they can have psychosis-like responses in captivity, but NOT in the wild. This is a really cool topic for me. "Project Nim" is also a difficult flick about a chimp that assimilates to humans because they raise him like one, very twisted but on the topic of animal language/communication.

I'm not certain this seaweed word validates them for using a human language, but their communication skills obviously are impressive based on what can be observed and taught to them. I cannot help but speculate that they might be using patterns similar to bird songs but in more expressive and/or creative ways (hence the advanced neocortexes). The most curious animals tend to be near the top of their food chains, right?

Thanks for posting this OP, cool topic indeed!

Aleister
reply to post by daaskapital

 

If only dolphins could talk...

I'm pretty sure they can and choose not to.

...man is the dream of the dolphin....

When I was a preteen I got a book on scientific work with dolphins, it was my favorite. And that is certainly NOT the first words dolphins ever spoke. They played tapes back years ago, and the dolphin was mocking her while splashing, "stop it alvin, stop it!" "stop it alvin, stop it!". It was on a different speed and frequency.

They call each other by name! And have their own language.

reply to post by daaskapital





They have been around millions of years longer than Humans... Why would we think they are incapable of acting in an intelligent manner? Why do we assume that the sounds they make are just sounds with no intelligence behind it?

I am starting to think that we might actually live in a zoo and that all life around us are observing us, scratching their heads going wtf?

Wasn't "Fa love Pa" was it?

Unity_99
When I was a preteen I got a book on scientific work with dolphins, it was my favorite. And that is certainly NOT the first words dolphins ever spoke. They played tapes back years ago, and the dolphin was mocking her while splashing, "stop it alvin, stop it!" "stop it alvin, stop it!". It was on a different speed and frequency.

They call each other by name! And have their own language.

Prairie dogs aren't the first critters anyone thinks of when intelligence comes up, but they have one of the most highly developed communications of around.

reply to post by ketsuko


My son was sharing a documentary on grizzly bears and wolves, and they're very intelligent too. Grizzlies were compared to chimpazees in the show, that while they use their claws for defense or agression, they mostly use them for digging and apparently demonstrate a fair amount of intelligence. We're the ones demonstrating lack of consciousness when assuming anything, we lack understanding. Or its that, understanding isn't on the corporate agenda.

reply to post by Unity_99


It's not so much that as it is that as sophisticated as they may be, they aren't human and don't display the self awareness that humans have except for a few of the higher species.

That doesn't make them less worthy of respect, but it doesn't mean we should elevate them over ourselves, either.

Unity_99
My son was sharing a documentary on grizzly bears and wolves, and they're very intelligent too. Grizzlies were compared to chimpazees in the show, that while they use their claws for defense or agression, they mostly use them for digging and apparently demonstrate a fair amount of intelligence.

Grizzlies are, AFAIK, the only bear that uses their paws like hands. They will pick up objects with their front feet and manipulate them. If grizzlies had thumbs, we'd be in a world of hurt. They are also really intelligent. The best thing with a grizz is to try not to engage them. If you trail a grizzly, they will often times do really weird/advanced stuff like leaving false trails and circling to get behind you. There are a lot of stories of grizzlies circling to the rear of the hunter and then following them closely to see what the hunter is doing. Then the guy turns around and surprise! there's a grizz looking him in the eye breathing real quiet...

Polar bears are worse. I don't know how Inuit survive at all. You get a real sense of presence from a polar bear. Sort of like what you get from an elephant or dolphin. The sort of thing you rarely see in dogs and not at all in kitties.

I've played friggin' games with polar bears at the zoo that had me wondering just how smart the # really was. Was at the Memphis zoo. The way it's set up there's a fence right on a moat too steep on that side for the bear to climb. The moat's not that wide. So you can stand maybe 10-15 feet from the bear at the narrowest point. Was there with my next older brother Dan killing some time early in the morning, no one else was around at all. This one middle-aged polar bear male comes ambling over, sits down, and starts watching me. I start talking to him, and he's doing the head-cocking thing like he's trying to puzzle me out. Eventually he stands up, chuffs, and does a sort of weird bounce that looked like a play bow, so I said "here, catch!" and tossed an imaginary peanut to him. He looks around on the ground, doesn't find anything. Looks back at me, and I toss him another air peanut. This time he looks up, watches really carefully, sees nothing, then reaches up and pretends to catch the peanut, puts the imaginary peanut in his mouth, and munches on it.. We spend the next few minutes playing toss the invisible peanut, with me doing basketball dunks, between my legs and so on, and the bear is doing wild catches - spinning, running back and jumping up to catch it and so on. Eventually a zookeeper comes over to scream at me for feeding the bear. But there's no peanuts. So he starts to yell at me for teasing the bear...but then realizes the bear's not being frustrated, he's engaged in what you could only call spontaneous imaginative play. My dogs wouldn't understand this sort of thing, certainly not in one or two tosses.

my dog Elvis has a language of about 5 words with me that are growl tones, my cat has Siamese in him and never shuts up

Aren't there a plethora of YouTube videos of dogs saying "mama"?

That's more impressive than a whistle.

Once we had this neighbours cat (behaved almost like a dog ), not only she would sit at our door around 5:30 pm when we arrived from work (how did she knew the time??), but she entered through our kitchen and, very clearly, she used to said: "ham" in front of the fridge!

Yeap, she was absolutely crazy about ham, she devoured it! I used to tease her: what do you want? Clearly she would answer: "ham" to the amazement of my missus, in fact,one day I even "forced" her to eat a bit of pizza with vegetables!!!, because, if not she wouldn't get ham... and she eated it all

So: what's the amazement of a dolphin recognising a whistle? A plea for grants?

ketsuko
reply to post by Gozer

 

I was going to ask how this was any different than Alex the African Grey who learned over 100 words and was actively and independently combining them in two and three word combinations he knew would get desired responses from his humans.

However, the experiment that I think shows more about what a dolphin is capable of in terms of intelligence was one that was done where they took a dolphin and every time it did a new behavior, they rewarded it. When it ran out of new behaviors, they stopped rewarding it. It was clearly upset because it was doing all kinds of behaviors that it had been rewarded for before and not getting rewarded for them even though they had fish. This went on for some days.

They were about to give up when one morning, the dolphin met them all excited and gave them a cascade of one new behavior after another for which it was rewarded. Clearly, it had made the connection. And, every morning after that, it always had one new thing to show them.

That, IMO, is a clear leap of intelligence to make.

There have also been some language analyses done on dolphin whistles and clicks that show that there is meaning to them. They aren't random sounds. We just don't know what they mean.

Interesting information. Thanks. As I said, I don't deny their intelligence, I just question our ability to measure it and understand it, but the examples you gave do tend to rise above the level of mere tricks based on repetition/reward. The reward was still there for the dolphin, but the dolphin had to think his way to a reward after awhile, instead of just blindly doing the same thing over and over, so that does show a great ability to reason, and not just repeat a trick.

reply to post by Serdgiam


When I was teaching our dog Dazy (rest her little doggy soul) many years ago I used hand signals and words for sit, give paw,speak, roll over etc. In her later years Dazy lost her hearing but still responded to the hand signals. She connected the hand signals to the words she had learned. Every dog owner knows that their pets pick up the meaning of human words like walk, food, ball. Some learn the meaning of sentences like go to bed, get your leash. Too bad they can't return the favor and teach us dog words. I don't think dogs really have a language. Their barks pretty much sound the same. Though we know whining or growling and can usually figure out what is causing the vocalization.
I remember a movie from the seventies called Day of the Dolphin. Maaaa, Paaaa. Of course without lips the dolphins aren't saying either of those words.

AutumnWitch657
reply to post by Serdgiam

 

When I was teaching our dog Dazy (rest her little doggy soul) many years ago I used hand signals and words for sit, give paw,speak, roll over etc. In her later years Dazy lost her hearing but still responded to the hand signals. She connected the hand signals to the words she had learned. Every dog owner knows that their pets pick up the meaning of human words like walk, food, ball. Some learn the meaning of sentences like go to bed, get your leash.

When training, I always suggest associating a consistent hand signal with all commands. Its just a good idea for a variety of reasons, and should be SOP in training. It also helps bridge the language gap more quickly.

Too bad they can't return the favor and teach us dog words. I don't think dogs really have a language. Their barks pretty much sound the same. Though we know whining or growling and can usually figure out what is causing the vocalization.

Its the nuances that make all the difference in the world... They cant teach us, but we can still learn through observance. The experience is a bit like going to a foreign country where you dont speak their language, and they dont speak yours. Through the noises we make, we can usually figure out what "causing the vocalization."

Being a Dr Doolittle type who can speak to all animals I can't see why anyone would want to talk to a dolphin..they are incredibly boring, always on about fish.
Give me a Chimp any day always good for a laugh .

reply to post by mactaties


I had a cat who knew that word too. He could smell ham from anywhere in the house and would come running yowling "Ham! Ham!" That's what the call sounded like, and he only used that call for ham.

We also had a useless ball of white fluff cat named Fritz who thought he was more dog than cat. He was slavishly devoted to my husband and loved catnip. My husband was able to teach him to stand on his hind legs using catnip. We have another cat who taught herself to stand by watching Fritz do it. One day, she came up and started to stand on command for her catnip and other treats. We didn't have to do a thing.

bigfatfurrytexan
...Pythagoras doesn't have much literature that survived the fire. But a few of his quotes and ideas survived. One of them relates to how he viewed animals. The current view of animals, that we refer to when we referenced the knowledge that "we" have collectively....it is a European view born of the time after the advent of the Roman Catholic Church. It is, in short, the Roman viewpoint.

What the hell does any of this rambling have to do with the fact that dolphins are sentient, as are elephants, as are any other number of inhabitants of this world? That bastards are abusing and enslaving animals every day?

Not to bully this post in particular, but this whole thread is guilty of absolutely not getting the message. That you do not get to just shoot and kill and eat or destroy the environment of other sentient beings just because you are too stupid and spend too much time watching brainwashing television trash, created by morons, for morons, to actually be educated about reality.

God's effing sake, burn your brains, you idiots.

What?


Are they sure it actually said something?

Is it similar to a parrot?

AlphaHawk
reply to post by daaskapital

 

It sounds like the dolphin is just relating a specific whistle sound to an object, in this case a type of seaweed.

I don't think this brings us close to understanding dolphin "language", rather it proves what we already knew and that dolphins are smart enough to be able to relate a sound with an object.

That's exactly how humans learn to talk.
Babies point at things and say wat dat then we say that's a truck. The baby starts saying truck everytime he sees one!
Apple, Spot. See Spot run.
Bringing back any memories?!