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Dolphins Recorded Having a Conversation For The First Time (telegraph.co.uk)
For the first time Russian researchers have recorded a conversation between two dolphins -- Yasha and Yana -- who were talking to each other in a pool. An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes The Telegraph:
Scientists developed an underwater microphone which could distinguish the animals' different "voices" [and] have now shown that dolphins alter the volume and frequency of pulsed clicks to form individual "words" which they string together into sentences in much the same way that humans speak...
"This language exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language, this indicates a high level of intelligence and consciousness in dolphins, and their language can be ostensibly considered a highly developed spoken language, akin to the human language... Humans must take the first step to establish relationships with the first intelligent inhabitants of the planet Earth by creating devices capable of overcoming the barriers that stand in the way of using languages and in the way of communications between dolphins and people."
The dolphins listened to an entire "sentence" before replying, according to the article, which points out that dolphin brains are larger and more complex than the brains of humans.
"This language exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language, this indicates a high level of intelligence and consciousness in dolphins, and their language can be ostensibly considered a highly developed spoken language, akin to the human language... Humans must take the first step to establish relationships with the first intelligent inhabitants of the planet Earth by creating devices capable of overcoming the barriers that stand in the way of using languages and in the way of communications between dolphins and people."
The dolphins listened to an entire "sentence" before replying, according to the article, which points out that dolphin brains are larger and more complex than the brains of humans.
Gary Larson's take on dophin deciphering.
Yeah.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Dolphins are actually ancient aliens.
What's with the quotes around "words" and "language"? Languages and words don't count if they're undocumented? I can understand the quotes around "sentence" maybe, since that implies a grammar which hasn't been verified, but words are fundamental. If they make a noise which has a specific meaning, that's a word.
Also, thumbs up to the editor for the last line there. I laughed, ruefully.
It won't stop me from eating tuna (and I'm not a republican.)
Dolphin 1: I know where we can get some really good fish.
Dolphin 2: Sounds great! Why don't I go get Doris, you talk to Sheila, and we can go there and make a night of it?
Dolphin 1: Works for me. Wanna grab some mackerel afterward?
Dolphin 2: It's like you read my mind!
Dolphin 1: Hey, who's the pink dork with the microphone?
#DeleteChrome
There are a lot of language using animals which are not yet recognized. Humanity is just getting to the point of seeing that there are other intelligences here on Earth.
We have livestock working dogs. They exhibit a lot of language and string up to six words together, use adjectives and have names for each other, us and objects. We have about 300 words we use with them, both from us to them and them to us as well as what they use to each other. It is clear they have a lot more words they use with each other that I don't understand so their language is considerably more extensive than the smattering of pidgin we share.
Realize I'm not talking about Fluffy, a typical domesticated dog that was raised as a singleton isolated from other dog culture. These are livestock large working dogs that are far closer to their wolf ancestors and they grow up in a culturally rich environment of a many generational pack on our farm. They work for a living and know hundreds of individual livestock animals that they tend to on the farm.
Measuring a brain purely on size is very misleading. At least a fair portion of the relative size difference of brains in different species has to do with body size, perhaps because larger bodies have more sensory cells and larger numbers of nerves, which necessitate more basic processing power for sensory input, as well as sending commands to various parts of the nervous system. Where the brain is larger in comparison to body mass, there is a tendency to find more intelligent animals, so the key here, at least in part, is that ratio.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Back in the 70's and 80's, people recorded dolphin vocalizations, and identified the equivalent of human phonemes, basically just different sound patterns that would occur repeatedly. By collecting a lot of data, and counting up the occurrences of distinct phonemes, they were able to show a phoneme frequency that matches the exact same patterns as human speech (frequency here meaning how often a phoneme occurs, not the frequency of the sound waves).
For instance, "the" occurred 6 times in the paragraph above, "and" occurs 3 times, and words like "vocalization" occur once - far less often. All human languages have this distribution where a small quantity of words makes up the bulk of common conversation, whereas things like bird calls or other vocalizations from less intelligent species follow a more flat distribution.
The point being, we've known for a long time that dolphins communicate using something very similar to human speech. This is pretty neat progress, but IMO it's pretty disheartening that after several decades we're still not anywhere near understanding their language. If we can't figure out how to communicate with fellow mammals sharing a common lineage, it really challenges the common sci-fi trope of having any kind of meaningful discourse with a creature from the other side of the galaxy.
Are we humans so self-centered that we did not expect other intelligent animials to talk with each other?
To converse, both sides have to want to talk.
Dolphins show little or no interest in actually teaching us their language, so it's more akin to learning a dead language from the last native speaker - one who hates your guts. It's not simple thing.
Then there's the assumption that we can have any kind of meaningful discourse with them, that they think in any way similar to us. That's just unproven.
Then there's the assumption that just listening is enough to learn anything at all. Even listening-and-playing-back does nothing. The dolphins know it's a recording and don't respond in the same way, even if they show interest.
To be honest, I see little point in trying. Dolphins aren't sitting those solving the maths equations that we can't. They are probably talking about where the fish are, where their friends are, and where the danger is. Not something we can usefully use, especially if they are bright enough to know recordings and ignore them.
The reason we don't yet have communications is because it's a lot of effort for almost zero gain.
Premise: Dolphins have "human-like" intelligence and communicate through a sophisticated language.
Observation: Despite decades of human effort trying to decipher it, Dolphins have made no attempt to try to help us understand their language.
Conclusion: Dolphins don't actually want to talk to us.
Measuring a brain purely on size is very misleading. At least a fair portion of the relative size difference of brains in different species has to do with body size, perhaps because larger bodies have more sensory cells and larger numbers of nerves, which necessitate more basic processing power for sensory input, as well as sending commands to various parts of the nervous system. Where the brain is larger in comparison to body mass, there is a tendency to find more intelligent animals, so the key here, at least in part, is that ratio.
This is probably to what you're referring: Encephalization quotient
Encephalization quotient (EQ), or encephalization level, is a measure of relative brain size defined as the ratio between actual brain mass and predicted brain mass for an animal of a given size, which is hypothesized to be a rough estimate of the intelligence or cognition of the animal.
This is a more refined measurement than the raw brain-to-body mass ratio, as it takes into account allometric effects. The relationship, expressed as a formula, has been developed for mammals, and may not yield relevant results when applied outside this group.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Yup. There was even a Scooby-Doo episode based on that subject: "Scooby's Night with a Frozen Fright". It first aired October 3, 1970.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
They live in 3D, Mr Flatscreen. It's 3D gestures all the way down. Using wavefronts. The echoes of which they can reconstruct into 3D maps on the fly. Er, swim.
Cower before your superiors. Oh, wait, you can't -- no flippers. Also too slow. Limited range of hearing. Weak. Small.
Wow, you just suck.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Lends new meaning to 'click-bait'.
hey, so what happened to Fred again?
He tried that thing, you know, crawled out of the water to see if we could escape our aquatic existence.
WTF! To live with them??
Quit looking their way! Talk about something else! Uh, yeah, them tunas is great...er, mackerels, I mean...why are they still staring at us
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Isn't that an Americanism, i.e. optional?
You'd better hope they don't eliminate people who don't know that the terminating period for that sentence belongs inside the quotes, sparky. :)
The position of a period relative to an ending quote mark depends on which country you speak (or learned) English in.
I've always been told it depends on where the period belongs. That is to say if you're quoting an entire sentence (e.g. the end of the quote is the end of a sentence) the period goes inside to denote this, otherwise it goes outside. According to this source, placing the period inside the quote regardless of logic is an "American" thing; though I'm American and follow the logic provided there.
Literally every other source I bothered to look at (all American style guides) say the period (or comma) goes inside the quote unless there is a parenthetical citation, in which case it follows that. After a dozen or so sources, I gave up on trying to find one representing a country other than the US; if anyone can provide me one or more, that would be greatly appreciated.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The dolphins listened to an entire "sentence" before replying, according to the article, which points out that dolphin brains are larger and more complex than the brains of humans.
This is the best summary. My ex-girlfriend never listened to an "entire" sentence before replying. I need to start dating dolphins.
"lt;dr" is the correct response to most of my posts.
We're talking about intelligent forms of life, not football players.
Learning the American style of trying to stuff all punctuation inside quotes always seemed like a sort of madness to me.
Here is an interesting read that might broaden your stylo-linguistic horizons.
There are so many instances when placing punctuation outside the quotation punctuation makes infinitely more sense, 'style guides' be damned.
Actually, not really. Among most species bigger brains = bigger neurons, so that the number of neurons increases far more slowly than you would expect. One of the major evolutionary leaps among primates was that neuron size remains relatively constant across species, so that larger primates have dramatically more neurons than their smaller cousins.
Which is largely responsible for the fact that, despite the fact that dolphins have larger brains than us, they have only ~20 blllion neurons, compared to our ~100 billion.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
since I read the entire article before replying.
No it does not. The period is for the whole sentence, which is not a quote. The quoted words are just a list.
No, quoted words are a string. The end of a list can be implicit, or if the list has only one element, you can denote it with a trailing comma.
Or were we not talking about python?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
This is pretty neat progress, but IMO it's pretty disheartening that after several decades we're still not anywhere near understanding their language. If we can't figure out how to communicate with fellow mammals sharing a common lineage, it really challenges the common sci-fi trope of having any kind of meaningful discourse with a creature from the other side of the galaxy.
The problem is context. You have to assume that a dolphin, if they have a language, has hundreds of words for fish. But without semantics, all you can do is guess. For all anyone knew, Egyptian's hieroglyphs were just pretty pictures till the Rosetta Stone came around. Even then it took 20 years before anyone could confidently say what were drawn on those walls. We still aren't confident on how you say some of the phonemes either. It could be a "finding out dinosaurs had feathers all this time" event.
Still we should try. I don't think its disheartening because people are trying HARD at this. The lessens we learn in decoding the raw speech patterns of our planet's creatures will help us on truly alien species. I just hope when we do discover alien artifacts, that they aren't passed around as pretty door stops like alto of the Egyptian's ones were.
"Hey fred! That black monolith looks great behind my flat screen TV!"
This line of thinking perplexes me. Yes, they may be talking about things that we don't necessarily care about, but we almost certainly can tell them things they would like to know. Such as where danger is. We could possibly introduce new vocabulary and through the power of giving something a name, give them a new concept that they can relate to each other. We can make smarter dolphins to eat.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How's this?
From http://www.thepunctuationguide...
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
"bwayno dee-us"! https://thenexttobestblogever....
Have you read my blog lately?
Yes old fashioned nets kill dolphins. No, the dead dolphins are not canned and sold as Tuna. Old fashioned nest are now banned in many jurisdictions, modern nets allow most Dolphins and seals to escape, a large proportion of canned Tuna now comes from open water fish farms. Some companies source Tuna only from fishermen who use a feathered hook on a rod (a common practice here in Oz). Some governments will only allow rod fishing for Tuna, those companies who insist fishermen use rod or are forced by size and geography to operate in rod only jurisdictions will heavily advertise their "dolphin friendly" status (even though most of them fought against the introduction of the laws).
CONservation : It might confuse you to know that I am an old fashioned "liberal" who has fond memories of working on farms, fishing boats, and old growth sawmills, let me know when you have managed to locate my political pigeon hole on your simple minded left/right axis of human behaviour.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
They also have a higher ratio of glial cells to neurons. This is probably an adaptation to maintain homoeostasis in an organism which can face very sudden transitions in environmental temperature and pressure.
printf("why would that bother you?);"
Large bodies have exactly the same number of degrees of freedom and muscles as an equivalently shaped smaller one. Saying stuff like 'dinosaurs needed huge brains to control their huge bodies but were still dumb' as if brain density plays a factor in intelligence has always seemed like an unconvincing argument.
Social insect brains are fucking TINY (250k neurons) yet allow the creature a huge repertoire of behaviour.
Think if you had 250k nand gates to build the control logic for something that can walk, fly, build a nest, explore, gather food, herd other creatures, fight, flee, communicate, follow a trail, cut leaves, balance and carry things, and mate, you could do it?
Isn't that an Americanism, i.e. optional?
I've read originally, in handwriting, the punctuation used to come below the quotation mark, both forming what nowadays would be considered a single character. When people transitioned to print, there was no easy way to do that, so some began placing the punctuation before the quotation mark, others began placing the quotation mark before the punctuation, and over time either style became the standard in print. Most countries went for quotation-then-punctuation. The USA went for punctuation-then-quotation. And that's it. There's no right or wrong option there, just an arbitrary usage that eventually became normative.
By the way, if we were to do it "right", as in, to become historically accurate, we should ask the Unicode Consortium to provide us ligature version of the different end-quotation marks with the different punctuations available, then have word processors replace them when typed, as they sometimes do when you type three dots and those get replaced by the single ellipsis symbol. Maybe those already exist? After all, there's no technological reason for keeping them separate anymore.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
It's to support legacy hardware.
Printing presses using physical typeset would have problems with a tiny period or comma in the middle of open space (away from text and under the quote marks) - it would tear paper or break off the typeset. The get around that, they moved the dot closer to other text - to the left of the quote mark.
Somehow that hack implemented for hardware support changed the language structure to become official, even though that's not logical or even the original standard.
Think of it as an IE6 of the English Language.
Or, as Winston Churchill purportedly said to a publisher who admonished him on ending a sentence with a preposition, "This is something up with which I will not put!".