Comments on: Will we ever… talk to dolphins?

By: Mags

Mags — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 00:16:09 +0000

DennoMo – is this what you were talking about?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GOb3nFpewM

By: Casey

Casey — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:29:47 +0000

“So long and thanks for all the fish!”

I know it was a lay up, but I had to do it. Cool story. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. And I wonder how much the US Navy shares it’s data with non-military scientists (http://www.public.navy.mil/spawar/Pacific/71500/Pages/default.aspx)

By: DennyMo

DennyMo — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:24:47 +0000

I recently saw a documentary on sea mammals that documented an interesting symbiotic relationship between a pod(?) of dolphins and the fishermen of a village in South America. Every morning, the fishermen gather in the shallows with their nets and wait. The dolphins herd in schools of fish to the waiting fishermen, then do an “en masse” tail slap to signal the fishermen to cast their nets. The dolphins catch many of the fish who are able to avoid the fishermen’s nets. It’s been going on for over 100 years. Obviously, there’s some communication and planning going on there.

By: Gretchen Icenogle

Gretchen Icenogle — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:26:16 +0000

While it’s true that many trainers are less interested than Herzing in what dolphins have to say, they need to attend to at least some cetacean messages in order to be at all effective (and in order to keep themselves safe). They don’t have the “luxury” of coercion, and I’d bet any of them could tell you what it looks like when a dolphin flips them off. They have not cracked the sonic code of whistles and clicks, but the best know enough of dolphins’ physical vocabulary to achieve something like dialogue with them. Indeed, your account of Herman’s work suggests that dolphins’ may approach the structural abstractions of “true” language more easily through gestural than auditory signals. That said, I’m eager to see what comes of Herzing’s attempts to establish a new ground for communication with wild (i.e. fully autonomous) dolphins.

By: Bill Rockenbeck

Bill Rockenbeck — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:16:03 +0000

There’s a broken link to your previous article:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/2012/02/28/when-meeting-up-at-sea-bottlenose-dolphins-exchange-name-like-whistles/
should be
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/02/28/when-meeting-up-at-sea-bottlenose-dolphins-exchange-name-like-whistles/

Great as always!

By: jebyrnes

jebyrnes — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:38:58 +0000

Careful. We know where this can lead.

By: Dub

Dub — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:40:13 +0000

Pha loves Pa!
(Ref “Day of the Dolphin” IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069946/ )