Dolphin utters 'word' for first time

John_Rodger_Cornman
What?


Are they sure it actually said something?

Is it similar to a parrot?

No. A parrot can actually pronounce a word. This is some whistling code.

My cat calls me " ma"

I've always known dolphins are smart but when those US Navy dolphins when AWOL I was quite impressed (an old post somewhere here on ATS). The fact that they can associate a certain food source with a sound (articulate the sound) is pretty cool. They are our eyes and ears of the sea so we would do well to understand them.

Dolphins speak all the time but their language is difficult to interpret. They are sentient intelligent beings. Duh!

I wonder if the females talk more than the males?

2nd

@op....I think the dolphin was just mimicking a sound. Like some birds that are also known to do.

i was a big fan of this guy's work with dolphins, back in the day. (70's)

en.wikipedia.org... interesting dude all around.

here is one of his books,

www.amazon.com...

and part of his website,

67.55.50.201...

i never underestimate animals. i've had rats, cats, dogs, horses, fish and a chinchilla.

we have a pug that "talks" all the time AT me! we have "conversations" in the mornings. my wife has to tell her to shut up! lol!
she likes to grumble, mostly.

Antipathy17

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.

I agree someone what.

How does it not bring us closer to understanding dolphin's language though? I feel being able to identify objects together as one sound from two different species as a stepping stone into building up a vocabulary we'd both recognize. Which would hopefully progress into one language we can use to communicate and in the long run, possibly use to understand each other's languages.

This has nothing to do with speech and is simply learned behavior, almost any animal can do this.


Whether dolphins have a language is up for debate, this is simply not valid evidence for it.

A monosyllabic squeak can hardly be defined as "uttering a word" can it? My cat has a particular type of meeooww it makes when it wants food that it doesn't use at any other time,but she's not using an actual word to convey her needs,just a simple vocal cue.
An actual word would normally contain syllables and vocal inflections.

dolphins have a range of sounds that are far out of reach of our hearing!

why they voluntarily "speak" to us in our hearing range shows their intelligence.

who knows how advanced their sonar capabilities are?

i can figure out my dogs words for treat.

they also bark at certain other dogs far away that are barking at someone or something. other times they don't.

they all have a language. whale songs?

animals understand us better than we them.

that thread about elephants differentiating language and people, comes to mind.

reply to post by tsingtao


This is the truth, its allowing us to participate in their speech, while they wait for us to wake up. I believe its a part of their assignment to hold higher frequency over earth and assist humanity.