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Translator Puts Us Closer To Dolphin Communication
LordStormes sent in a link to an article about a new device that may allow dolphins to finally thank us for all the fish. Denise Herzing, founder of the Wild Dolphin Project and Thad Starner, an artificial intelligence researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, have been working on a project called Cetacean Hearing and Telemetry or CHAT. The pair hope that CHAT will allow them to "co-create" a language with wild dolphins, allowing the two species to communicate. From the article: "Herzing and Starner will start testing the system on wild Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) in the middle of this year. At first, divers will play back one of eight 'words' coined by the team to mean 'seaweed' or 'bow wave ride,' for example. The software will listen to see if the dolphins mimic them. Once the system can recognize these mimicked words, the idea is to use it to crack a much harder problem: listening to natural dolphin sounds and pulling out salient features that may be the 'fundamental units' of dolphin communication."
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
if the dolphins are smart enough to understand us, they'll play dumb.
We're getting another one of those aw-blah esspanyol sounds!
I am officially gone from
My inner historian is sad that no one mentioned the Rosetta Stone as inspiraton.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone
It was seaQuest DSV. People made fun of the talking dolphin in the '90s. Looks like the producers and writers of that show had more foresight than they were given credit.
they must be one step closer to translating ponies! Very exciting times we live in! Oh my!!
On the 10th anniversary of Douglas Adam's death.
If dolphins are so smart, how come they haven't built a translator to communicate with us yet?
In all seriousness, I'm wondering what we're supposed to do if we find out that dolphins are sentient creatures. We have, whether we always honor it or not, created an array of international accords on human rights. Do we open that up to them? Does that mean that we would have to demand Japan and other nations that have killed them pay compensation? What kind of compensation would a dolphin want? What about territorial issues?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I remember an episode of Bullshit where they dealt with the "dolphins are as smart as humans" junk and basically showed how the whole idea went back to some Timothy-Leary-esque "researcher" (John Lilly) who spent his off days dropping acid and spouting nonsense about how the dolphins could heal us too.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
dolphins use sonar to geolocate and find food. The sonar pattern used also depends on whether they are navigating, searching for prey or attacking. When a dolphin "tells" where to go to find fish, it will play back a stylised summary of the sonar imagery from navigating past the steep cliff, to "seeing" the school of 1kg macrel, to the successful attack.
This 3D communication is efficient and fast, and connects directly to the visual part of the brain. Powerful and emotional imagery can be communicated well.
Humans 1D voice communication compared is inefficient, indirect and lack precision and descriptive elements.
"Riding a bow wave" is a 1D sequence of sound that has very little info or precision compared to the sonar echo of actually riding the wave.
Humans should probably try to speak sonar, rather than try to dumb down a dolphin to speak human
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Are we really even sure there's a language at use here? A computer can either search for system, syntax and grammar, or just do a frequency analysis on soundbites. If dolphins are using the former then they might have a chance, but if it's the latter the best they can hope for is a dictionary - which sounds much the same, but it's the comparison is akin to a well written program versus a two element CSV file.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
I would if I could, but there isn't anywhere in the world to get far enough away from people like you. You do make an excellent case for postpartum abortions though. If they pass the law to allow it, I'm sure you'll be the poster child.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I think you're a bit confused.. The most "successful" under what terms?
The most abundant creatures on earth are copepods or prokaryote SAR11. I'll leave it to a zoologist to give the correct answer.
The healthiest are sharks, with no known illnesses.
Humans aren't the most prolific. That would probably go to one of the first category. We're only fertile less than 25% of the time, and not every attempt causes reproduction. Even once we do manage to fertilize an egg, there's about a 10 month period before you can hope to start the process again. Our young spawn are not able to then reproduce for over a decade. The window of reproduction is generally about 40 years, but it is generally considered humans must be over 18, and doctors strongly suggest against reproduction over 35. So, a 17 year window of acceptability for reproduction. That's a very short period.
Our lifespan is trivial compared to some. The Arctica islandica can live over 400 years. Genus Hydra and Turritopsis nutricula are considered biologically immortal, due to the way they reproduce.
Wealth (as any monetary system) was a human invention, just as religion.
When's the last time you had a chance to lay out in the grass and enjoy the sunshine, before hunting for dinner, and never had to consider going "to work" for a "paycheck" to pay "rent", "mortgage", "taxes", or other "bills"?
We may have had it pretty good. We've have done a great job of screwing up a perfectly good thing. But we're humans, and that's what we do best.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The above are wrong... it was Sealab 2021... see: Dolphin Boy.
In the least I'm sure they communicate through caressing each other with sonar but that is a very subtle and private communication. You have to actually be being caressed with the sonar to get the full meaning of it; it might not lend well to listening in. For instance I'm sure they would have a way to do the equivalent of tapping each other on the shoulder and pointing in a direction to look. It would lend itself more readily to a communication of emotion.
It will be interesting if they can learn a human language and grammar adapted to their vocal abilities. It would be the equivalent of teaching great apes sign language but much more natural.