Mar 24
A database of sounds from a community of wild dolphins is proving to be a great resource for researchers studying dolphin communication.
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A database of sounds from a community of wild dolphins is proving to be a great resource for researchers studying dolphin communication.
Discover how Google AI's DolphinGemma decodes dolphin communication, revealing insights into their language and social behaviors.
No one is responding.
Poor guy. 😢
dolphin facts
Dolphin Communication: Unlocking the Secrets of Underwater Language
Dolphin communication is a fascinating and intricate field of study, revealing the extensive and complex ways in which these intelligent creatures interact. As experts have discovered, dolphins rely heavily on sound for communication, using a variety of vocalizations to convey messages and establish connections within their social groups. Their distinctive high-pitched whistle, known as a…
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The media has been all atwitter this last week about a rediscovered paper from 2011 that “proves” that “dolphins speak to each other in complete sentences.” It’s garnered international awareness as a story… which is a problem, considering that the paper that they’re referencing makes massive jumps in logic to draw appealing but very over-enthusiastic conclusions, equating single bursts of sound with phonemes in spoken human language. The author immediately concludes in the discussion of the 2016 paper that because we’re seeing something that ‘might’ look like phonemes, an assumption can be made as to how dolphins convey information by combining them. The current media furor incredibly misleading because not only is there not enough definitive evidence to support any sort of new scientific theory, the original data has been so over-interpreted that the original paper is full of potentially erroneous and definitely unproven statements.
The newest article! Learn all about how that wonderful new story the media has been loving is totally and utterly wrong because a researcher was fitting his data to the hypothesis he wanted to have be true.
Credit goes to Ceta Base for finding the original paper.
Gift from the Universe
This morning the Universe gave me a show I couldn’t believe.
My dog, Tilly, runs entirely on her time - no amount of ‘training’ has managed to change that. As a dutiful dog owner I always carry bags, and this morning I had to use one of them on my walk down to the beach. That meant I wanted to dump the bundle in a council bin, which entailed climbing back up onto the walkway above the beach.
This gave me a good vantage point to survey the water in the bay. It was almost full tide and about 300 metres out from the water’s edge I noticed a circling flock of seabirds – seagulls and terns, diving and squabbling over food.
‘Ah,’ I thought, ‘a school of fish.’ Then, as I stopped to look more closely, I saw a black fin arch out of the water, then another and another. I couldn’t believe my eyes. How amazing! The dolphins (probably Hector’s dolphins) were herding fish, enjoying the feast, and sharing with the gulls and terns. The birds appeared to drop down into the water at the very moment and at the very spot where the dolphins would surface.
For about 10 minutes the dolphins swam around and around, and then they slowly started leaping their way along parallel with the beach. A few hundred metres down the beach, as if a decision was collectively made, the entire group turned and headed out towards the headland and open sea. The seagulls followed for a while, hoping for more of this free feast, but finally they settled on the water like left behind wedding guests, amidst the sodden streamers and half empty wine bottles.