Inter-species Communication - Tumblr Posts

A dolphin named Flipper (or not)

Most people are familiar with the sounds that dolphins make: chirps, barks, claps and whistles. But recently, research has identified patterns in dolphins’ whistles that show similarities between the ways dolphins and humans use languages: their social usage of sound. More specifically, dolphins have names. And no, these aren’t names like “flipper” or “skipper.” They’re actually called signature whistles, and are formed by each individual dolphin within their first few months of life. These signature whistles function as a name-like identification; dolphins emit these whistles roughly nine to ten times more often than any other whistle when encountering a new group of dolphins. These signature whistles don’t just set one dolphin apart from another: through variants in the whistle, they also convey information about their moods, and other relevant details—kind of like the information humans get from the vocal tone, and inflection of the voice when someone is speaking. The discovery of signature whistles has sparked more discussion about the possibility of dolphin-human communication. Up to this point, human-dolphin communication has been pretty one-sided, humans teaching certain shapes and words to the dolphins. Now however, different groups are trying to find basic units within the dolphin “language” that they can put together, to possibly start to understand what dolphins are talking about. This could take a while, due in part to many physical differences between humans’ and dolphins’ perception of sound, but the study and cataloging of signature whistles (being compiled by Sarasota Dolphin Research) is giving us a glimpse into the social lives of dolphins, and the brief look inside of the world of proverbial dolphin Flipper looks to be quite interesting indeed.

Guest article written by Kerry (toujoursjamais.tumblr.com)

According to Time Magazine, Alex's last words were "You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you." This statement was not made out-of-context; the New York Times reported Alex was saying goodnight to Dr. Pepperberg as she left the lab for the evening, as per usual. Later that night, Alex died.

This context does not in any way tarnish Alex's memory nor does it make the story any less sad and sweet. He died a quick and unforeseeable death; the only theory that the full quotation might serve to disprove is that Alex was psychic. He was a incredible, brilliant individual, and though other parrots may one day learn to do what he accomplished, there will never be another like him. Regardless of whether or not he truly possesses "language", he and Dr. Pepperberg present one of the most successful examples of inter-species communication, ever.

The lesson to be learned here is that if you're quoting a parrot, you should at least do as well as he did to copy words correctly.

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