Your point about alarm calls having ‘worry-inducing’ qualities is well taken. It reminds me of how a baby’s cry produces stress in everyone around, even including the family dog!

I also agree with the rest of what you said. One other point that came up in conversation about this is that apparently dolphins and pygmy sperm whales have been observed — what to call it? — hanging out together? I don’t have a reference for this nor time to look one up, but perhaps someone else in this exchange could look for it? If these species in particular travel together, then this communication becomes even less surprising (though still amazing).

Seems to me there’s a significant difference between simply recognizing an alarm call and the communication that conservation officer Malcolm Smith says he saw. Alarm calls uttered by worried animals may generally have qualities (harsh, piercing, high-pitched, repeated) that tend to worry other individuals, and it would be easy to imagine this carrying across species.

But as Lizzie and you point out, whales and dolphins are both intelligent and social animals. The communication story doesn’t sound as strange when you think that dolphins lead other dolphins around all the time—perhaps even leading each other out of danger—and they may have standard instinctive and/or learned acts of communication that facilitate this social behavior.

One of my (anthropology) students told me about this case today, and it got me thinking about what we know from other animal communication research.

Today’s class included that vervet monkeys have alarm calls they recognize among themselves. Vervet monkeys have lots of sounds that appear to have meaning but fall short of the language standards listed above from the DCP. But when scientists play a recording of certain calls over a loudspeaker, the monkeys respond “appropriately” — e.g., if the original call was made when there was a leopard nearby, then the monkeys act as if there’s a leopard upon hearing the recorded call.

Here’s a link with videos and sound clips of this behavior! http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/media/vervetcalls.html

Now a very cool part is that these monkeys also recognize and respond appropriately to the alarm calls of other species, including “other primates, ungulates [cloven-hoofed mammals] and birds. ” http://www.theprimata.com/cercopithecus_aethiops.html, citing Estes 1991.

Amos Kenigsberg wondered about cetacean taxonomy; pygmy sperm whales understanding dolphins would be roughly like vervet monkeys understanding other primates. This was observed in the wild prior to 1991. However, Mr. Kenigsberg thought it would be akin to *strangers* communicating, and for all we know, the mother pygmy sperm whale could have known Moko the dolphin for years.

It would be surprising if intelligent social mammals were *not* aware of the basic communication of other species in their habitat. There’s a clear selective advantage for this type of awareness. Of course, “basic communication” isn’t necessarily “language”, as discussed very well in Ibuchen’s blog.

Still, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

Very good blog thanks

And as for Jon:
The fact that you see humans as the pinnacle of Earthly intelligence because of what you see outside your Manhattan window says enough for me.