Dolphins, and other animal signals

I have spent a good part of my life trying to break codes. But not what you think. I have seen certain communication happen between different animal species, and really been amazed. I've seen Crows and Sparrows employ guile and deception in such a refined way, truly an art. I've seen my own cat go bonker's just before I had an epileptic seizure. And it got me to thinking. In my work with the Navy I did a lot of analysis on interpreting sound and drawing an image from it. Since humans are largely visual creatures, we have to translate one form of communication to another. What we see in Dolphin echolocation is a dense, mute-faceted signal. It's just not used for targeting prey, did you know they can with the resolution they use they can see the degree of abrasion on a fish's scales? From this they can spot the age, and by default the health of the targeted fish. Seems they avoid the really old ones, or the sick ones.

And it gets better. They seem to encode a great deal of "chatter" in the signal. I mean it does make sense. It was thought that before the age of steam whales and other sea mammals like dolphin's could communicate globally. That they could using there low frequency carrier waves send a lot of information across the planet. And with a denser pulse we now know dolphins and perhaps some whales can send such a powerful sonar pulse it and use it as a weapon. It can stun prey into a convulsive fit. A signal so complex it can do so many things at once. Perhaps even their own form of art and music. Or neighborhood gossip. Wow. And it would be to our advantage to tease apart these most complex communications. After all, they have more then 8 million years of evolutionary time in grade. We need listen to what they have to say. If we ever want to speak to "ET" on an equal basis a good to start is know what the creatures on our own Earth are talking about.

I agree, mankind has really gotten away from all the signs of nature.
It never fails, after a major catastrophe someone will say 'oh, i saw that animal running ... away...before it happened.' duh, pay attention folks.
Personally, I feel like I have great relationships with all my 'pets'. You have to learn their language, and to some extent they seem to try to meet you somewhere in the middle.
Most interesting has been my 2 conures. For years I just had a Sun conure, he makes no effort to 'talk' like so many people think parrots do. I had to learn his language, from body language to noises expressing his wishes.
About a year ago I got a green cheek conure and watching them teach each other (and me) is fascinating. the green cheek 'talks' in english (mimics), yet taught the Sun her body language and vocal language and vise-versa.
Every little noise they make has a meaning, every little noise.

this seems like a dead thread but i can't stop thinking about it.
my other animals have learned the other animals language. If the conures sound 'the alarm cry', the dogs respond. When the dogs sound their 'alarm bark', the horses, goats, and even chickens react.
it just amazes me how they all learn each others language
So many humans come here and don't get any of it. I think they are amazed I can understand.
Just over the weekend I had friends over and they went to feed with me. I instantly commented on the dogs behavior. I said 'something is in here'. (in the barn) sure enough, the dogs found a opossum in the barn. My friends couldn't understand how I knew that. the dogs 'told' me.
not that I'm Dr. Doolittle, but I get off on understanding them. It's not that hard.
I always wanted to work with dolphins communication. I think that would be so cool.
'

reply to post by arbiture


I can only star your Op once, but thanks a million stars for that information. It is not something which I either retained or remembered hearing before. Why do you think that so many deaths and stranding have happened?

Having been in the Navy do you have anything you would like share about the tests which may have caused harm to the whales and dolphin to name just 2 of our sea brothers? Not on to you, just trying to understand.

Originally posted by horseplay
I agree, mankind has really gotten away from all the signs of nature.
It never fails, after a major catastrophe someone will say 'oh, i saw that animal running ... away...before it happened.' duh, pay attention folks.
Personally, I feel like I have great relationships with all my 'pets'. You have to learn their language, and to some extent they seem to try to meet you somewhere in the middle.
Most interesting has been my 2 conures. For years I just had a Sun conure, he makes no effort to 'talk' like so many people think parrots do. I had to learn his language, from body language to noises expressing his wishes.
About a year ago I got a green cheek conure and watching them teach each other (and me) is fascinating. the green cheek 'talks' in english (mimics), yet taught the Sun her body language and vocal language and vise-versa.
Every little noise they make has a meaning, every little noise.

There is no doubt in my mind we can learn a lot from animals. As for "pets" they often take on some of the personality of their "owners". But I have seen dogs trained to sense epileptic securers in people they know nothing about, they have no relationship with them at all. I know this is true because my cousin trains dogs just for this purpose. I think what they are sensing is something olfactory a smell signal associated with the brain going haywire. The old saying "animals can sense fear" may be quite literally true.

Originally posted by antar
reply to post by arbiture

 

I can only star your Op once, but thanks a million stars for that information. It is not something which I either retained or remembered hearing before. Why do you think that so many deaths and stranding have happened?

Having been in the Navy do you have anything you would like share about the tests which may have caused harm to the whales and dolphin to name just 2 of our sea brothers? Not on to you, just trying to understand.

I know we toyed around with such high powered sonar it could injure or kill those who relied on this for normal navigation and communication. At least in this case when it had to do with the U.S. Navy the common sense guys prevailed. I know we no longer blast such intense levels of sound into the ocean. But the Russians, and the Chinese? They do things by there own accord. And we know several nations now are experimenting with this level of sound. And there is nothing we can legally do to stop them.

I have let it be known through the appropriate channels that use of this kind of high powered sonar is destructive and cruel. And the data I have collected is offered free of charge to any nation that wishes to see it. Since none of this involves military technology, I don't see a problem with this. So far some have asked me for the data, and as of this post the jury is still out as to what they will do with it.

We can learn so much from animals....

Prairie Dogs have a language of their own, which we have been able to "figure out" somewhat

New Language Discovered: Prairiedogese
Prairie Dog Language?

I was out in South Dakota one summer where these little critters live... I remember a guide telling us that they could communicate in "sentences" with verbs and everything (this was about 10 years ago, actually, so this is not anything super new)

Perhaps language is not equivalent to brain:body ratio

I love how much we have yet to learn about our fellow animals

I do think that our sonar and devices are what cause the marine mammals to meet their demise... They probably are disoriented, can't see or swim properly... This definitely NEEDS to be studied, it is very cruel indeed.

reply to post by arbiture


Back in 01 prior to 911, I spoke with a commander of a Navel installation about this issue and he was actually pissed that the public was accusing the Navy of using these technologies that hurt the dolphins, I believe he truly believed his stance and that they were not in fact at that time using such technologies.

What you say does raise questions about the other countries which do things without any public recourse or watchdog groups working with their militarism to ensure that this type of action/experimentation does not injure aquatic life in the process.

If what you wrote in the Op is any indication it may be possible that what happens in the tradition of the hundredth monkey could be affecting sea life worldwide.

It sickens me when we see story after story come out about deep sea animals floating to the surface dead and dying. Even without any sonar type technologies affecting life, our own planet is going through changes naturally which in the past has begun in the ocean and eventually killed most life on earth.

Originally posted by antar
reply to post by arbiture

 

Back in 01 prior to 911, I spoke with a commander of a Navel installation about this issue and he was actually pissed that the public was accusing the Navy of using these technologies that hurt the dolphins, I believe he truly believed his stance and that they were not in fact at that time using such technologies.

What you say does raise questions about the other countries which do things without any public recourse or watchdog groups working with their militarism to ensure that this type of action/experimentation does not injure aquatic life in the process.

If what you wrote in the Op is any indication it may be possible that what happens in the tradition of the hundredth monkey could be affecting sea life worldwide.

It sickens me when we see story after story come out about deep sea animals floating to the surface dead and dying. Even without any sonar type technologies affecting life, our own planet is going through changes naturally which in the past has begun in the ocean and eventually killed most life on earth.

Believe it or not, for what ever it's worth, I agree completely with your Navy Commander friend. The U.S did indeed develop extreme active sonar technologies, and we refrained from using them. We saw the results of some of our test's and they were, well ghastly. I know we shared this with many nations, some not always our "best friends". Never forget, you can not "uninvent" a technology. And humans being the creative little bastards that we are, will independently invent that same technology in time. Over and over again. Now this is pretty rank but also true.

The way most serious spooks exchange secrets is the same way most major nations prevent a major war. We find those on the other side who are interested in the same things we are and we "arrange" to meet. We bring issues to those who will listen. Like this one, and we insist on a meeting. And we offer something to meet if required. Most of the time the heavies meet at simple scheduled events. Like scientific conferences, And then you establish an understanding between two people, and that when the poop hits the fan and someone asks can you do something about this, and do you care, you can give a rational answer that will hold under scrutiny. Wars have been prevented using just that method.

We have made remarkable strides in the technologies involving passive communications. We say nothing, we just listen, and try to learn. And my God, we are newborns here... But we are learning.

There is no doubt in my mind we will understand "ET" only after we understand the truly marvelous life that shares our own world. If we have the gall to think other animal communications, verbal and otherwise are gibberish, then I am truly embarrassed at what any alien's think of us. If I was them , I 'd avoid us like the plague until and if we grew up. In the mean time, both the needs of nations will go on as they always have and if we are fortunate technologies will improve, and do so fast enough to save not just us but everything we share the the planet with.

May I share a little anecdote?

I have a Lab/Akita Mix dog. He's 6 years old...And still a giant puppy.
He is very attached to my wife..Her protector.

a couple of years ago one day..he would not stop "nosing" her, at her Knee.
Not just little love snuggles, he was persistent. she had some knee pain already. But no other symptoms.
But this day, her knee hurt more than usual...Enough for a trip to the emergency room.
A doppler test revealed she had a deep vein thrombosis. A DVT....These can sometimes break loose, and cause an embolism elsewhere. It's the luck of the draw, where they end up. Lungs or Heart, or brain. Possibly death.

She was given Heparin, and later coumadin..Which let the clot dissolve slowly.

We really didn't make the connection between our dog, and the event at that time.

Then sometime later, a few months, it happened again. He "nosed" her in almost the same place.
She also had similar pain. Again, a deep blood clot was discovered. hmmmm..Does this dog "sense something"

She did have one break loose once...And it became a PE, Pulmonary embolism. But it happened at her work.
It broke loose after she had made a long stair climb. Just a block away from the hospital. She was there for a number of days.

Turns out she has a persistent clotting issue. We aren't sure why. Nor are the Doctors.

Then one weekend at home, She had "that pain" again...However, our dog had no reaction.
No nosing...No extra attention to her leg, or anywhere else. But to be safe, we took her to the emergency room.
It was revealed that she had sprained her knee a little. no clots...Just some pain...

This happened once again. No doggie attention, just some Arthritic pain. The doppler test revealed all clear. again.

He's been very accurate...100 percent really. So much so..That my wife's doctor will sometimes ask..."What does Leo think?". When there is similar pain. Obviously she still recommends a doctor visit...After all he's just a dog, right?

I consider him a preliminary diagnostic tool.
His name is Leo, and he's a lifesaver.

Get to know your pet's body language and attitude. They often tell you things that need to be investigated.

Here is "Doctor" Leo

We have a lot to learn.
and then we will only learn that we are just getting started.

the partical thet travales faster than Light!
THAT is what SETI should be looking for
as a form of comunication.

in space you Dont wont to wait days to talk to some one on the next star!

reply to post by spacedoubt


First, we have no doubt dogs can sense disease in ways far more advanced then we can by smell. And we are trying to figure out a way to translate their scent patterns our technology can provide information we can use. One part of the problem is between how and why human brains and dogs can process the same "kinds" of information. We actually know that humans can smell a lot of same olfactory signals that dogs can but our brains "dumb it down" and call it noise, not signal. It has been said that "noise" is just the the music one can not appreciate. Given what dogs smell and how it preoccupies them, for us thats most likely a good thing.

But we know they can sense something that they can then translate for us, where it may be really important. Like sensing cancer cells so small even an electron microscope could be snuck up on. Or a pre-seizure foci that I personally think, having had seizures myself may affect chemicals associated with stress related hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. And since we know dogs can sense that, that may be (?) what their keying on. I want to know what are THEY FEELING, be it an emotional response or what, can we tie this to other observable events in the brain? Whats really cool is the answer is, maybe.

reply to post by arbiture


Please allow me to add, very cool looking dog...

Originally posted by buddha
We have a lot to learn.
and then we will only learn that we are just getting started.

the partical thet travales faster than Light!
THAT is what SETI should be looking for
as a form of comunication.

in space you Dont wont to wait days to talk to some one on the next star!

I have never said this before to anyone on an unencoded channel. My partner for the last 12 years has given me many nicknames, most of which I need not mention, but the favorite and true to form is "The man of infinite impatience" Yes I do believe that in time (whatever the hell THAT means) our appreciation of quantum mechanics will erase both the concepts of distance and time. Both two sides in effect of the same coin. Like matter and energy with simple nuclear reactions, or more recently the idea that energy and information is also the same. Most of us see a "bundle" or burst of energy as noise. My argument is if we could somehow make sense of this in a timely manner, then that "noise" would resolve itself and we might use the information that all energy and matter, in existence contains.

But I never gave a lot of credence to SETI. Don't get me wrong, I do support it, I just think our best approach to finding other "Earth" like planets is for us to build big enough telescopes in space to visually see these planets, and realistically we could build them with current technology, and see far in excess of 1,000 light years.It would take the work of today in 2011, at most 2 or 3 of the best or the richest (either works well) nations and in 20 years we would know for sure if with in 1000 LY of Earth, if there is any chance of another Earth. But I have never had a problem with the idea idea that most intelligence out their is also most likely non-technological. On our own planet we know Dolphins and Whales are very, very smart. And they don't have to make tools because only an environment that that changes often enough, like daily, or seasonally, have to, The bottom line? it's just that I never thought too many aliens, at least close enough for us possibly, and reasonably to ever ever get to know, (that is before OUR technology itself changed so much we might not recognize OURSELVES in 1,000 or 10,000+years) would ever talk to themselves or us on the mm wave band. I hope to god I'm wrong... But I don't think I am?

reply to post by arbiture


I love your post, arb,

And I agree entirely - we should be looking more at animal behaviour instead of rushing off and killing our own species.

That is what we do, and we are supposed to be the most intelligent beings? No way.

Also, we seem to be too stupid to realise that we are also killing our planet.

Originally posted by catwhoknowsplusone
reply to post by arbiture

 

I love your post, arb,

And I agree entirely - we should be looking more at animal behaviour instead of rushing off and killing our own species.

That is what we do, and we are supposed to be the most intelligent beings? No way.

Also, we seem to be too stupid to realise that we are also killing our planet.

Thank you for your post. But consider this. We are still a very young species. We are dangerous only because we are tool makers. Not in spite of it. We should never be ashamed of who we are, but always must be wary of what we can do. And just being "tool makers" is just the half of it. I always felt were we have always had the capacity as a species to be as intelligent, and as decent, as we chose to be. The universe is a garden made for us to gently wade through. But the choice is ours.

reply to post by arbiture


One of the coolest , and smartest dogs I've ever had...I never knew this until recently, but there are groups of breeders that purposely cross the Lab/Akitas. Labrakitas, they call them. Gentle and protective. Usually between 90 and 110 pounds, with a secret yearning to be a lap dog...LOL

Originally posted by spacedoubt
reply to post by arbiture

 

One of the coolest , and smartest dogs I've ever had...I never knew this until recently, but there are groups of breeders that purposely cross the Lab/Akitas. Labrakitas, they call them. Gentle and protective. Usually between 90 and 110 pounds, with a secret yearning to be a lap dog...LOL

It's interesting you mention your dog's intelligence. My cousin is one of the few in the U.S. that trains highly specialized service dog's. Most of them are trained to help people with severe seizure disorders. They can be life savers for kid's and adults who have extremely frequent and drug resistant seizure's. Although there are new implant technologies akin to a pacemaker, they are limited in they don't work for many types of seizure's. Sadly, her client list has exploded as a result of injuries many of our troops incurred in Iraq and Afghanistan. People survive neurologic trauma now that would have been fatal only five years ago but at a great cost. Forget driving, just being alone for these people can be dangerous, as falls and status epileptics's, when you don't "come out of it", are common. Brain damage akin to a stroke is a real possibility, and can be fatal. She's worked with many types of dogs, but swears for this a Lab/Akita or Lab/Shepherd mix seem to be the best.

They sense the seizure in enough time to "alert" the person so they stop and lay down, on the ground if they have to, or can push them up against a wall, sofa or something to prevent them from falling, if need be. Interestingly, I've seen several of the dogs before and after training and I swear they develop a "hyper-protective" response to the one person they are given to. The way she works the eventual owner goes through a lot of the training with the dog. Talk about "lap" dog. Rarely can people with a severe disorder even live alone, but she has trained the dog's to hit a "medic alert like" panic button after a time if they don't come out of it. I know the dogs are incredible in what they can sense and do. One of my employee's was wounded in the first gulf war and had to live with someone, in his case his sister until we got him his own trained dog in 2007. Now he's able to have his own apartment. He loves the dog, which is great because he said his sister was driving him nuts. He confided in me that he hated the fact he needed his sister to "watch over" him. (I met his sister, who could drive Mother Teresa batty) plus, as he was a former Master Sargent who saw combat that's easy enough to understand. His dog sticks to him like his shadow (also the dog's name) when at the office.

As for how, I'm one of several who think they might smell some biochemical artifact that is detectable before the seizure. The old saying that "dog's can smell fear" might be literally true. One area also very interesting is we know dog's can also sense cancer long before it's usually detected. We want to try to design a sensor technology that might do the same, but we have to know what the dog "knows" before we can build a test to do the same. DARPA, and others that work with sensor-detector science tech is doing a lot of work in this area. This is one example of an area there is real "collateral" effect's from DOD research, where the technology, it's true origin untraceable, is derived from once classified work in unrelated areas. But no technology can make you feel your the center of the universe like your dog.

reply to post by arbiture

Nice post OP. I agree, mostly.

But teasing any meaning out of the speech is not easy. There're smart people working on it.

But the more people working on it, the beter the chances we'll crack the code.

Originally posted by jonnywhite
reply to post by arbiture

 

Nice post OP. I agree, mostly.

But teasing any meaning out of the speech is not easy. There're smart people working on it.

But the more people working on it, the beter the chances we'll crack the code.

edit on 24-11-2011 by jonnywhite because: (no reason given)

Believe me, I know how hard it is. One approach my group has taken in trying to track the pathways that distinguish signal recognition, from any sensory input "type" is tying the perceived input be it olfactory, acoustic, tactile, visual, and other EM inputs, to how and where it's processed by the brain. But the hard part is how is it perceived, as many types of sensory input, smell for example also are triggers for memory and an associated emotional response. That last part is tough as animals can't give you that much feedback, at least given our current technology, yet. One approach I found useful in particular when working with dog's and cats, is to work with their owner as something of a "translator". It's a bit unorthodox but I place a lot of value on "personal subjective" interpretation, when dealing with animals that are someones pet.

One of the ways to correlate brain activity, and determine "channels" is to use PET (no pun) as well as MRI scans modified to take very rapid scans, in a two-step manner so-to-speak. One interesting "side effect" to trying to image the brain of an animal in as normal a "pose, position, etc" for them as possible is to design a two stage image-scanning technology. If it works (jury is still out) we can use it to rapidly scan an individual, and transfer that scan-image-template to a larger system for processing, like an ordinary hospital size MRI for example. That signal can be sent from the field wirelessly. This is leading us to develop smaller, perhaps hand held scanners that could be very helpful in trauma medicine in the not to distant future. (5-6years or sooner). Tricorder anyone? Anyone who has had an MRI knows you got to stay still for it. For the most realistic of behavioral studies, we need to have the animal not "locked in" an MRI, though not painful, that's going to create stress that is likely to raise levels of cortisol or adrenaline, that will impact the entire signal process, and somehow we will need to filter out that noise.

In the mean time asking owners to participate in the testing process has proved hugely popular. Being around animals, and having pets all my life I'm very protective of them, as most people are (or should be) with their pets. It's also comforting to have a pet owner say to their 120lb Irish Wolfhound "Be good to the nice man in the white lab coat Pickle's" (the name of the one Irish Wolfhound who's been in one study).