A Dolphin By Any Other Name

SloppyElvis writes "CNN is reporting that scientists have proven that Dolphins can communicate with each other by name. From the article: 'researchers synthesized signature whistles with the caller's voice features removed and played them to dolphins through an underwater speaker' to which the mammals responded. This form of identification in language was previously only known to exist in the human world." Thankfully they still haven't evolved opposable thumbs.

Comments

Certainly not unheard of in captivity...

[RyanFenton]

My parents own a pet store, and move a pair of African Grey Parrots between work and home every day, along with two dogs. The birds not only recognize their own names, but they appropriatly name the dogs when they encounter them. In addition, they can tell them to sit by name and even will give the dogs bits of food in exchange for treats - they appear to do this appropriatly when they want to either cause mischief or gain obedience from the dogs when the dogs are frightening them. The birds also use eachother's names appropriatly - and at the pet store seem to know the difference between these specific dogs and the other similar dogs that they encounter.

Intelligence and symbol identification/use definitely seems to me to be a general phenomenon larger than mammalian life.

It would be interesting to repeat similar experiments with intelligent species of wild birds to see if they generate unique sound identification that they may use to identify third-"persons" non-visually in some way. Most likely birds would use such ability to immitate eachother for social manipulation - but the conclusions of the use of such symbolic proto-language would still be meaningful.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Certainly not unheard of in captivity...

[spun]

Grey Parrots are among the smartest of birds. Alex is an African grey parrot whose use of language has been studied by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, currently at Brandeis University. Alex knows about 100 words and can understand abstract concepts like shape and color. Not only that, he has taught other parrots to speak, even going so far as to stop them when they pronounce a word wrong and saying the correct pronunciation.

Re:Ever heard of parrots ?

[rk]

To answer your second question, the answer is probably yes. Not only that, they will develop their own language.

parrots context-correct utterances

[evenprime]

It obviously had learned this should be said by someone before clamping down on their hair and pulling.

Most of what my macaw and my parents' african grey falls into this catagory. Obviously, they learned "Hello" and "good morning" because those things are said to them. It is even clear that their understanding of these sounds is different from the literal meaning; our birds will use these comments any time they want to greet you or initiate contact.

What is more interesting is the novel constructions and novel useage; i.e. the new uses they find for an existing word or phrase and the entirely new phrases make by combining words in new ways. Examples:

• They grey often says, "Want chip" when he wants you to bring him a corn chip (or any other snack). He knows what cats are, because if my sister is visiting and is bringing cats, we tell him to go in the cage because the cats will be here. One time my sister brought a kitten with her. He had never seen a kitten, and wanted to look at it. He walked to the edge of his cage and yelled, "Want cat" so we would bring the kitten to him. He had never heard those words used together.
• All our birds have had previous owners, so they have different vocal repertoires from their past. They grey was used to saying "good night" when he wanted to be put into his cage and have the lights turned out. The macaw used "night-night" when he wanted this to happen. The grey understood that these two sequences of sounds had equivalent meaning, and changed his phrase to "good night-night".
• Whenever one of the birds is running around on the floor causing mischief, someone in the family will yell "get the bird!". The grey started using this phrase in a novel context; when he is locked in the cage and wants out he now yells "get the bird!" This usage of the phrase was never modeled for him, but he knows that the sequence of sounds will cause someone to pick him up.
• Once when he was chewing on woodwork in the house and getting scolded for it, the grey stopped, looked at the human and asked, "Are you mad?" None of us recall having said that near him before.