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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.
Yeah.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
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
After deciphering, they will find out that they were saying:
- I think they are on to us.
- Yes, perhaps it's time to search for another planet.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
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.
What they're actually saying, of course, is "So long, and thanks for all the fish".
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?
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. . . .
There are examples of complex behavior in cetaceans that would be difficult to explain without assuming they can communicate. Here is a video of orcas (which are technically dolphins) using a complex coordinated activity to isolate and capture a crabeater seal. But that isn't even the most interesting part: First the adults perform the actions, while the junenile orcas watch, then they let the seal recover and climb back onto the ice. Then the juveniles give it a go. They screw it up. Then the adults go again, showing them how to do it right. The the juveniles try again. How could they do that without being about to "talk"?
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.
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.
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.
You already showed how they do it: the parents/elder shows how to do it and the kids learn. That is also a form of communication but doesn't give evidence for any kind of conversations as such.
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.
We're talking about intelligent forms of life, not football players.
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.
Most land based predators and birds teach their young how to hunt in a similar way, many creatures such as hawks and big cats catch and partially disable their prey before releasing in front of the kids so they can practice dealing with live prey (nature is cruel but we all have to eat). It's said that a baby seagull takes about 2yrs to learn from it's parents what it can and can't eat from a human rubbish tip. Most of these creatures communicate with each other with simple phrases, "danger", food", "help me", "fuck me", "fuck off", etc, their "language" does not have the flexibility of human language but it does have the ability to convey a simple message that is universally understood by every member of the species.
There are very few universally understood words or gestures in humans, displaying the palms of your hands to say "I mean no harm" is the only example I can think of but there are probably more. Humans, dolphins, apes, and a few other creatures are known to have "culture", there is variation in the social behaviour and vocalisations of groups. People have been trying to crack dolphin language for decades under the unspoken assumption that all dolphins speak the same dialect/language. Maybe dolphin language will turn out to be as flexible and culturally varied as humans but this article tells me we still don't have a clue what they are talking about.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
How's this?
From http://www.thepunctuationguide...
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
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.
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.
Perhaps the are saying...
-Did you notice how rude those humans are?
-Yes, they don't even let each other finish a sentence.
printf("why would that bother you?);"
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!".