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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)