Killer Whales Caught On Tape Speaking Dolphin
sciencehabit writes Two years ago, scientists showed that dolphins imitate the sounds of whales. Now, it seems, whales have returned the favor. Researchers analyzed the vocal repertoires of 10 captive orcas, three of which lived with bottlenose dolphins and the rest with their own kind. Of the 1551 vocalizations these seven latter orcas made, more than 95% were the typical pulsed calls of killer whales. In contrast, the three orcas that had only dolphins as pals busily whistled and emitted dolphinlike click trains and terminal buzzes, the scientists report in the October issue of The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. The findings make orcas one of the few species of animals that, like humans, is capable of vocal learning (video)—a talent considered a key underpinning of language."
"Hey buddy. Hey pal. You wanna come swim in my tank? Come jump on over, my tasty friend. We have lots of fish to fill your delicious belly."
Hmm.. Language learning could as well be within-species. Sounds more interesting here that dolphins and orcas can communicate spontaneously given close quarters.
Aren't Orcas dolphins?
All the more reason to free these suckers...god damn.
I get it though, they're no longer suited to living in the wild, etc etc. Can't we help them out with some head-mounted lasers or something?
Aren't orcas dolphins?
anymore... Put away his Orca on a stick corn dog....
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Just sayin'.
These are also the only mammals (or anything for that matter) that have blowholes. They're both mammals. And both have tails that are flat horizontally rather than vertically. They both also are capable of being thankful to other species when it applies.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Are they thanking us for all the fish?.. I'm worried now...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The plot to overthrow us is underway :(.
I wonder if they speak it with an accent, like when I try to speak a little Spanish. :-P
I guess this doesn't seem all that surprising (on the surface, to someone who admittedly doesn't know much about it).
A huge amount of their brains is geared towards processing sound because they use sonar. Is picking up some dolphin sounds really that much of a stretch?
I mean, I can haltingly say "dos cerveza por favor" and "ron negro con jugo de pina" ... and my wife assures me I'm an idiot.
Whales and the like are smart enough to hunt in packs. I can't even dribble a basketball very well. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
We're not even the smartest.
Yet we constantly strive for a definition of "intelligent" that includes all humans, and excludes all non-humans.
Get over it already. All megafauna is intelligent or it wouldn't have made it this long.
from wikipedia - "the species is more closely related to other dolphins than to whales".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whale
How do they know that the dolphins aren't ventriloquists?
TFS seems to imply some divide between dolphins and whales, where orcas fall into the latter. Orcas and dolphins share the same subfamily.
For comparison, humans and chimps share the same subfamily, and there are clear examples of similarities between us (assuming most of you are human) and chimps. Thus it's not exactly surprising to find similarities between orcas and dolphins.
One of these days, we are going to figure out that intelligence != human intelligence. Who knows, maybe it'll be before the alien overlords who haven't learned their equivalent show up?
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
Taped evidence is inadmissable without a warrant.
Orin Hatch has a blowhole, but I'm not entirely certain he's a mammal.
A talent shared by other species (parrots, for example).
I wondered if the errant pings from MH370 that various navies were chasing might be immitations of the actual FDR sonar pinger made by some sea creatures. Dolphins (or something) hear the real pinger and then figure out that if they imitate the noise, people in ships will come over to 'play'.
Have gnu, will travel.
In other news, parrots who live with humans learn to speak human languages and some chimpanzees living with smokers have even learned to smoke cigarettes.
I guess those things are bound to happen when two species hang together when their anatomies allow to.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
I'm always amazed at how WE'RE always amazed (or supposed to be) that animals can do things that we do.
There are fewer and fewer and fewer things that are the realm of humans alone (and even then, it's generally only by scale, rather than actual ability).
We're animals. They are animals. We all do things like "try to sound like other animals we hear".
Orca: What do you mean "So long, and thanks for all the fish"? What aren't you telling me?
Hullooo, zeeba neighba!
Whose turn is it to alert Japan so they can kill more whales to investigate this?
Orcas, Dolphins, and Whales.
Oh My
Last time I checked killer whales aren't actually whales. I want the last five minutes back.
Are they sure it was dolphins speaking whale and not a blue tang that sounds like Ellen Degeneress?
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Pickup lines by male Orcas.
"Hey, Baby, you've heard about Orcas, right? We're whales, Honey, and I do mean that in every way. Yeah. Once you've gone black and white, you never go back. And white."
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I'm probably late with this post, but orcas are the largest dolphin. This news really is big dolphins imitate little dolphins. I've also heard of large apes imitating the hand communication of some smaller apes.
Reminds me of a cartoon I saw: 2 dolphins swimming along & one says to the other, "Don't look now but here come those ghastly dolphin-friendly tuna". I wonder how much they can have to say and how intelligent they can be, given their environment. "Hi, what are you up to?" "Oh just swimming, you know. You?" "Yeah, swimming. Where's Derek?" "Swimming." "Doing anything this weekend." "Swimming." "How's the kids' new school working out?" "Swimmingly." "Have you eaten?" "I've just had a herring and wrack salad, thanks." "Ah. Fancy a swim?" "OK."
Orcas are dolphins, not whales.
Parrots caught on tape speaking 'doorbell.'
Because the doorbell was near the parrot's cage and it 'learned' to make that sound.
This is similar. Why do people treat it as so remarkable?
To overthrow us.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I have dogs that speak pig words and human words. We have a large pack of livestock working dogs that do guarding and herding on our pastured pig farm. The dogs have learned some of the sounds the pigs make to drive the pigs when herding. This makes them more effective at doing their job. They also know and use some human words both with us and with each other. We also use whistles, clicks and hand signs to communicate. There is a lot more interspecies communications going on than scientists realize in their limited ivory tower view of the world. It is mildly amusing when they "discover" reality. Those of us out working in the real world have known many of these things for millennia.
Although orcas are called "killer whales", they're actually dolphins. See http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/articles/killer-whale-facts/
OKsofar
I wish more people were bothered by the fact that they are doing experiments at all on captive Orcas and Dolphins.
Most captive Orcas aren't in facilities because they've been injured (unlike zoos and aquariums which work on rehabilitation and reintroduction). Orcas are often ripped away from their pods. Many of them get violent and kill trainers (and rightfully so). You can't put something that travels the ocean in a fish tank. Orcas only live to be about 25 in captivity where in the while, they live to be 50 ~ 60.
The documentary Black Fish talks a lot about the problems with captive Orcas. You should never go to Seaworld or other sea parks. Don't give them any money. They are shit shops that destroy these beautiful animals.
Those Orca betrayer Dophin-lovers speak like ugly, little cetaceans. As if they would belong some disgusting Delphinidae family instead of our proud Orcas!
The Great White Supremacist Sharks are not going to like this one bit.
Orcas are not whales. So there are no "Whales imitating Dolphins" here - the Orcas ("Killer Whales") are technically considered Oceanic Dolphins - in fact, the largest member of the Delphinidae family. Poor Orcas dolphins must be saying "Hey we are in the same family! I just have a different accent...".
Can't we use one of those real-time translating technologies to try to keep a conversation with them? We have no other species (besides some birds like parrots, that is) with which to maintain a conversation (chimps cannot talk). That would be kinda great... unless they start to beg for Freedom... :-/
Even those toys used for "translating" dog language might help, if only for a few fixed dialogs...
PS: I know such technologies are not that good for human languages, but still we should be trying it IMHO.
I remember a documentary saying that killer-whales are not really whales but are dolphins that are whale-killers
What do you call an Orca that speaks two languages?
A bilingual Orca.
What do you call an Orca that speaks three languages?
A trilingual Orca.
What do you call an Orca that speaks one language?
An American Orca.
Sorry, had to.
A guy sees a sign in front of a house: "Talking Dog for Sale."
He rings the bell and the owner tells him the dog is in the backyard. The guy goes into the backyard and sees a black mutt just sitting there.
"You talk?" he asks.
"Sure do." the dog replies.
"So, what's your story?" The dog looks up and says, "Well, I discovered my gift of talking pretty young and I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA about my gift, and in no time they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping. I was one of their most valuable spies eight years running."
"The jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn't getting any younger and I wanted to settle down. So I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security work, mostly wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings there and was awarded a batch of medals."
"Had a wife, a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired."
The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog.
The owner says, "Ten dollars."
The guy says, "This dog is amazing. Why on earth are you selling him so cheap?"
"Cause he's a bullshitter. He's never left the yard!"
Come to me my darling! GULP!
You'll never catch me going through the doors of one of those revolting places. They should be shut down and the captive animals rehabilitated and returned to the wild. The ones which were captive-born are a more difficult problem, and may need to be released into a constrained area (a fjord with a netted sea connection. perhaps) for an extended period of rehabilitation and time to form a stable pod and learn their natural environment.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"