Scientists able to talk to and teach dolphins sentences - Dolphins share a universal language.

That's so concieted of the humans to think they are teaching the dolphins. They are learning from the dolphins. They dolphins are trying to teach them how to communicate. Dolphin=bilingual Human=only english.

Originally posted by Threegirls
Very interesting OP,

I'm not sure why but this reminds me of the film 'Johnny Mnemonic'.

It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that they had a dolphin hooked up to a computer and could openly talk to it?

Naw.... surely, that couldn't be it.

Sidenote; SeaQuest comes to mind too!

Very interesting find.

Obviously its just a matter of time now until they take over.

Praise the great Dolphin haha


Seriously tho, I am curious about how they only just figured this out. I mean they have been working with dolphins for a while now, Is the work just being published now?

I wonder hwo they will use this to extend the communications exactly. I mean there are limitations,

Greetings,

Dogs shag as a form of dominance. If your dog is humping you then he/she feels like they are your master.
Verify with a breeder or vet.

I, for one, welcome our dolphin overlords.

reply to post by daaskapital


I tried to find a source, but so far cannot find one.

I recall a theory regarding how whale and dolphin songs were stories handed down from generation to generation regarding the past... and were supposedly originally communicated to them by humans from Atlantis or something like that... I'll try again to find the source.

reply to post by daaskapital

I thought scientists had learned to communicate with dolphins like 40 years or more ago.
I also note how quick so many jump off topic if you even mention the word sex! Ditsy humans!

Originally posted by earthdude
That's so concieted of the humans to think they are teaching the dolphins. They are learning from the dolphins. They dolphins are trying to teach them how to communicate. Dolphin=bilingual Human=only english.

Humans only speak english?

I have swam with dolphins before and they are truly an intelligent and special species that needs our protection from those humans who would slaughter them for profit.

Do we really need another "intelligent" species on earth? Dolphins aren't as intelligent as people think. They are no more intelligent than a dog.

reply to post by daaskapital


did you ever think that dolphins are doing studies on us

reply to post by daaskapital


Bible sort of mentions the "creatures" in the sea with the breathe of life, used in the same way as what mankind has.

No surprise to me therefore. But certainly cool to have it scientifically confirmed.

edit: May have been wrong on that. I'll have to look it up more.

So is this the "missing link"??

I would imagine the first thing they'll say is PLEASE STOP EATING US!!!

That another dolphin in another location understands the sounds is for me proof that they communicate just like we do.

Dolphin rights!!!

Same intelligence as a dog?? My dog was far more inteligent than many people I know.

reply to post by daaskapital


In human terms the fact that the sound image is perceived the same by other dolphins who were not related to the first is evidence that it is not (at this level) like a human language, where the assignment of sound to meaning is symbolic and arbitrary.

However that doesn't mean that dolphins don't have any arbitrary symbolic representation.

I"ve always thought that dolphins would likely adapt the very finely tuned sensory organs to communications given that they are a social animal and they have a huge part of their cortex devoted to sonar processing, just as humans have a large part of their cortex devoted to visual processing. If a dolphin can transmit and receive sound reflected from an object, it could be able to transmit sound simulating that object (which was just shown experimentally), and from there it's a small step to transmit sound representing an imaginary object, and from there entirely symbolic concepts. It would be as if "pictionary" is the dolphin's natural form of communication and language---attempting to decode it as a timeseries of linear signals (as in human speech) is the wrong direction, just as if dolphins attempted to talk with us by squirting pictures in sonar even though we don't have the biological ability to use them. Dolphins may be able to 'read' as an instinctive natural language (as humans understand spoken language, whereas visual pictorial representations require years of study), the visual picture/symbols is automatically and effortlessly turned into cognitive understanding. We don't know what the processing capability is, but given the higher frequency of ultrasound (representing pictures) and the potential bandwidth there, the dolphins might be able to communicate some things even more powerfully or quickly than humans.

Evolution likes to re-adapt existing 'hardware'. Why don't humans have a visual biological language even though they have a huge visual cortex? Because we don't have any good way of transmitting visually, so there is no need/opportunity for communication, only data-input. (Squids and octopuses though can alter themselves visually very rapidly and also have large, high-quality eyes for the underwater environment (unlike dolphins), and so they may also have a literally visual language and two-way communication. )

The money quote from the article:

The ‘exo-holographic’ part of the acronym derives from the fact that the dolphin pictorial language is actually propagated all around the dolphin whenever one or more dolphins in the pod send or receive sono-pictures. John Stuart Reid has found that any small part of the dolphin’s reflected echolocation beam contains all the data needed to recreate the image cymatically in the laboratory or, he postulates, in the dolphin’s brain. Our new model of dolphin language is one in which dolphins can not only send and receive pictures of objects around them but can create entirely new sono-pictures simply by imagining what they want to communicate. It is perhaps challenging for us as humans to step outside our symbolic thought processes to truly appreciate the dolphin’s world in which, we believe, pictorial rather than symbolic thoughts are king. Our personal biases, beliefs, ideologies, and memories penetrate and encompass all of our communication, including our description and understanding of something devoid of symbols, such as SPEL. Dolphins appear to have leap-frogged human symbolic language and instead have evolved a form of communication outside the human evolutionary path. In a sense we now have a ‘Rosetta Stone’ that will allow us to tap into their world in a way we could not have even conceived just a year ago. The old adage, ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’ suddenly takes on a whole new meaning.

The only alteration I'd make is that we don't know if dolphin communication is devoid of symbols in this hypothesis, just devoid of conventional auditory-linguistic symbols. It might be more like early written language, pictograms which were faithful representations evolved into more abstract forms to enable faster and more succinct communication.

So dolphins might be able to 'draw' a likeness of a real thing that all other dolphins would recognize (because they can figure out what the real thing is), just like humans could draw a likeness of a cat or an apple or an ox. And then there could be universal, or non-universal, symbolic languages more like written human pictorial languages interleaving pictures of real things with pictures meaning other things or sequences/superpositions of things which have a distinct composite meaning.

Originally posted by Max_TO
Are they also not the only other animal to have sex for fun ?

Great story though

Well chimps certainly do....especially Bonobos! They do it at the drop of a hat!

Honestly I think it's hard to really tell just how much fun an animal is having from sex....I'd imagine that even Hermit Crabs find some enjoyment from the process, and are therefore having fun.....I doubt that most animals have the capacity to understand that sex leads to pregnancy.....so in that sense, I'd imagine most animals 'do it' for their own sense of enjoyment and pleasure....or in other words for fun.....Unless I'm missunderstanding your meaning of "sex for fun" here.

Originally posted by bhornbuckle75

Originally posted by Max_TO
Are they also not the only other animal to have sex for fun ?

Great story though

Well chimps certainly do....especially Bonobos! They do it at the drop of a hat!

Honestly I think it's hard to really tell just how much fun an animal is having from sex....I'd imagine that even Hermit Crabs find some enjoyment from the process, and are therefore having fun.....I doubt that most animals have the capacity to understand that sex leads to pregnancy.....so in that sense, I'd imagine most animals 'do it' for their own sense of enjoyment and pleasure....or in other words for fun.....Unless I'm missunderstanding your meaning of "sex for fun" here.

I've seen videos of turtles and from what I can tell they are having fun... just very slowly...

Great find

No wonder we had a hard time understanding dolphins. They could understand our commands, but we could not decode their "language".

If each ascii character in the picture below represents a whistle, click or burst-pulse sound a dolphin makes, they may have been saying this:



But we would have tried to translate it like an alphabet. Doing this, we missed the big picture (pun intended).

I think they probably do have symbolic language, and now that we know what to look for, we may start to understand what another intelligent species on earth is saying/showing us.

It could also broaden our SETI search criteria.

I think this is amazing news, i wonder how long it will take before dolphins are giving examinations for cancer and other density related illnesses.
It has happened already, but to be able to ask a dolphin to scan someone is something else altogether.

reply to post by mbkennel



Excellent observations!

I'm especially intrigued by the comparison between human-made pictograms (understood by humans by their visual cortex) and audio-pictogrammatical communication apparently at work amongst dolphins.

We only lack the knowledge of how a dolphin's brain translates these sounds into pictures within their mind.

On a side note, if this type of non-linquistic communication can be experimentally confirmed and fine-tuned , perhaps it could lead us down other avenues in developing a "language" for other animals?

Good stuff