Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff production of iHeartRadio. I'm Hoar
Speaker 1: hit Cham and today we're asking the question, can we
Speaker 1: talk to dolphins? They're one of the most intelligent animals
Speaker 1: out there. Is it possible to decode what they're saying
Speaker 1: to each other? We're gonna talk to two dolphin experts
Speaker 1: who have been observing and listening in on our poor
Speaker 1: boys friends for decades, and they're gonna tell us what
Speaker 1: we know about dolphines and whether we can use it
Speaker 1: to have a conversation with them. So get ready to
Speaker 1: take the plunge as we dive into clear blue waters
Speaker 1: to answer the question can we talk to dolphins?
Speaker 2: Enjoy?
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, If you ask a bunch of kids what
Speaker 1: their favorite animal is, the chances are more than a
Speaker 1: few of them will say it's dolphins. And I was
Speaker 1: one of those kids. I love to swim and I
Speaker 1: scuba and so to this day, if anyone asked me
Speaker 1: if I could be any animal, which one would it be,
Speaker 1: I'll still answer a dolphin. So I was excited to
Speaker 1: talk to our experts today. I had a lot of questions,
Speaker 1: what are dolphins like, what do we know about their language?
Speaker 1: And could we ever actually communicate with them. We'll start
Speaker 1: with our first expert, doctor Denise Hersing. Doctor Hearsing is
Speaker 1: well known in the marine biology community, and she's often
Speaker 1: called the Jane Goodle of the sea for her decades
Speaker 1: long work trying to understand how dolphins behave and talk
Speaker 1: to each other. First question I had for doctor Hersing
Speaker 1: was what are dolphins like? Well, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: doctor Heusing for joining us.
Speaker 2: Great to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Can you please tell us who you are and what
Speaker 1: you do?
Speaker 3: Sure? I'm doctor Denise Hersing.
Speaker 2: I am a marine mammalogist and I specialize in dolphin
Speaker 2: acoustic and behavioral communication. And I'm the head of the
Speaker 2: Wild Dolphin Project, which is a nonprofit I've been running
Speaker 2: for forty plus years and we go out in the
Speaker 2: Bahamas in the summer study while dolphins, and we've been
Speaker 2: doing it ever summer since nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: What kind of animal are dolphins like? How would you
Speaker 1: describe what they're like?
Speaker 2: Dolphins are an aquatic social mammal. They have a lot
Speaker 2: of parallels to terrestrial mammals like primates and elephants, in
Speaker 2: the sense that they have tight societies that are based
Speaker 2: on mother cap relationships. They have long term friendships. They
Speaker 2: learn and develop through the years, so everything they do
Speaker 2: is not instinct, you know. They learn the social rules,
Speaker 2: they learn who their friends are and who their enemies are,
Speaker 2: and they survive in the wild. So they're really a
Speaker 2: complicated social mammal that has just evolved for a aquatic existence.
Speaker 2: Partly why they're so difficult to study, to get time
Speaker 2: with them on the water and or under the water.
Speaker 1: What do I mean? Just the water is a difficult
Speaker 1: place to do studies.
Speaker 2: The ocean is a large place. It's a big area
Speaker 2: that they're resident in, right, So we can spend days
Speaker 2: looking for them. We kind of know where they hang
Speaker 2: out sometimes, but their mobile they move around, they chase fish,
Speaker 2: so getting observation time is harder I think than many
Speaker 2: terrestrial animals.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I had thought about that. Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: to swim after them basically to study them. So you
Speaker 1: mentioned that it's a resident pod. How about how many
Speaker 1: dolphins are you talking about?
Speaker 2: So historically it's been about one hundred animals every summer,
Speaker 2: so it's a small community. They're considered a coastal species,
Speaker 2: so they don't live in these big open ocean schools.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see. Is there a sense of what kind
Speaker 1: of social structure they have? Do these hundred dolphins organize
Speaker 1: themselves in any way or are they just sort of
Speaker 1: hanging out?
Speaker 2: No, they have their own organization. We call it fission fusion,
Speaker 2: which means that they come together and split apart, come
Speaker 2: together and split apart. For example, a typical group size
Speaker 2: for us would be eight to ten dolphins, like females
Speaker 2: would forage with other females, or it might be a
Speaker 2: big group of males looking for females. Or it might
Speaker 2: be a mixed up group.
Speaker 1: Interesting and it's flexible. I guess they'll switch groups and
Speaker 1: form different groups at different times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know they have friends. They have their
Speaker 2: best friends, and they have their alliances. They might form
Speaker 2: to fight off predators that sort of thing. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's pretty organized. The strong bonds between mothers and cats,
Speaker 2: in between male groups and the juveniles are the teenagers, right,
Speaker 2: They're getting in trouble and learning the hard way.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, whoa how does the dolphin get into trouble? Oh?
Speaker 2: There are many ways of dolphin cann't get to trouble.
Speaker 2: They can think they know more than they do, so
Speaker 2: they could challenge like an adult that's older than them.
Speaker 3: They'll get slapped around. For example, they can.
Speaker 2: Get a little too bold with sharks and they get eaten,
Speaker 2: you know, or injured.
Speaker 3: Again, they think they know everything when they're teenagers.
Speaker 1: Sounds familiar, huh, it does? Yeah. Did they also call
Speaker 1: their parents broke like my kids did these days?
Speaker 2: I don't know, We don't know.
Speaker 1: The other dolphin scientist I talked to was doctor Layla Sayik,
Speaker 1: a scientist that's been involved in the longest running study
Speaker 1: of a dolphin population in history.
Speaker 3: My name is Leila Sayek, and I'm a scientist at
Speaker 3: the Woodsville Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and the United States,
Speaker 3: and I study dolphin communication.
Speaker 1: Amazing. How long have you been working with dolphins?
Speaker 3: About forty years? Hard to willing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh my goodness. Can you tell me about this study?
Speaker 1: What do you mean it's been the longest running study
Speaker 1: on a group of dolphins.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's amazing because this resident population of dolphins in
Speaker 3: Sarasota was first sort of discovered and study began back
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy, so fifty five years ago at this point,
Speaker 3: and they did some research seeing where the animals go
Speaker 3: and actually discovered pretty quickly that these animals live there, like,
Speaker 3: not migrating up and down the coast. They are living
Speaker 3: in this one area in the waters in and around Sarasota, Florida.
Speaker 1: How many dolphins are there?
Speaker 3: There's about one hundred and seventy and.
Speaker 1: So you've tracked these dolphins through multiple generations by at
Speaker 1: this point, I imagine.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, there are six generations known to researchers. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so that's just amazing to be able to know an
Speaker 3: animal's mother and grandmother and great grandmother and great great grandmother,
Speaker 3: and not to mention all their siblings and aunts and
Speaker 3: uncles and you know, you name it. It's really an amazing
Speaker 3: data set.
Speaker 1: How would you describe what kind of animal they are?
Speaker 3: They definitely are very intelligent animals. I mean if they
Speaker 3: are very curious and really interesting to study because they're complicated.
Speaker 3: They kind of like us. They live long lives and
Speaker 3: they have a lot of different relationships with other dolphins.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to hear you say the word relationship. What
Speaker 1: do you mean what kinds of relationships the dolphins have?
Speaker 3: Well, they have really long lasting I don't know if
Speaker 3: you want to call them friendships or I don't you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know what the right word is, but they
Speaker 3: definitely hang out with certain other dolphins very predictably. And
Speaker 3: so that's seen especially in the adult males in the
Speaker 3: population that I study. And so when the males reach adulthood,
Speaker 3: they have this partner, their alliance partner who they are
Speaker 3: with really virtually all of the time. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: it's really the strongest bond that we see in the population.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can call them friendships. Sorry, interesting, So males
Speaker 1: and para kind of for life almost.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it can be for life. And I
Speaker 3: should also point out that I am talking about this
Speaker 3: one population of dolphins that I work with in Sarasota, Florida,
Speaker 3: but there are plenty of other populations of dolphins out there.
Speaker 3: We don't even know if a lot of them have
Speaker 3: these same types of social relationships.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, we don't know.
Speaker 3: We don't know. There is one other long term research
Speaker 3: site in Australia in an area called Shark Bay, and
Speaker 3: there the males actually much more typically form trios rather
Speaker 3: than pairs.
Speaker 1: What that's fascinating. It's almost like they have a local culture.
Speaker 3: I feel like you're saying, yeah, potentially that's right. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: that different populations do different things. They're certainly not in
Speaker 3: any way kind of hardwired to behave in certain ways,
Speaker 3: at least at that level.
Speaker 1: How would you describe this group of dolphins. Is it
Speaker 1: like a village, Is it like a pack? Is it
Speaker 1: like a family?
Speaker 3: Well, the word that my colleagues are run the project
Speaker 3: down there at the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, they call
Speaker 3: it a community. That's the word that they typically use
Speaker 3: to describe it. So, you know, that sort of probably
Speaker 3: brings to mind, you know, sort of the idea that
Speaker 3: these animals are connected in ways, you know, the way
Speaker 3: we think of a community, that they probably almost certainly
Speaker 3: all know each other. They probably even know whose mom
Speaker 3: and sister and things like that. I wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's a lot we don't know about dolphins. We
Speaker 1: know they have complex societies and that their behavior is
Speaker 1: not necessarily hardwired, which means they learn from each other.
Speaker 1: And that brings us to the main question of the episode,
Speaker 1: which is how do dolphins communicate? And could we ever
Speaker 1: talk to them? So when we come back, I'll ask
Speaker 1: our two experts these questions. So don't flip out, stay
Speaker 1: with us, We'll be right back. Hi, welcome back. We're
Speaker 1: talking about whether we can ever talk to dolphins, and hey,
Speaker 1: if you're interested in the general topic of animal communication,
Speaker 1: check out our December tenth episode in which we talk
Speaker 1: about the history of humans trying to talk to all
Speaker 1: kinds of animals, from gorillas and parrots, cats and dogs.
Speaker 1: But today we're focusing on dolphins. And so far we've
Speaker 1: talked about how complex the social structure of dolphins is.
Speaker 1: Now the question is what do we know about how
Speaker 1: they talk to each other. Here's more of my conversations
Speaker 1: with doctor Denise Herzing and doctor Layla Seig. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess that's prett to the question what kind of language
Speaker 1: do dolphins have or what do we know about how
Speaker 1: the way that they talk to each other?
Speaker 2: Sure, well, I think most scientists would probably first of all,
Speaker 2: say we don't know if they have a language, because
Speaker 2: that infers a lot of things. As far as you know,
Speaker 2: what we know of human language, so we know they
Speaker 2: have complicated communication.
Speaker 1: For sure. We do know some things.
Speaker 2: We know a couple really important things I could tell
Speaker 2: you right now. We can identify certain behavioral states like
Speaker 2: courtship or fighting by the types of sounds that are
Speaker 2: within that activity. You know, certain types of sounds we
Speaker 2: hear in aggression. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's like
Speaker 2: I could do it by ear too. But we kind
Speaker 2: of know that they do change sound types for different activities.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: What we don't know is are there repeated patterns structure
Speaker 2: and order to some of these sound sequences that would
Speaker 2: suggest they have language like structure, because any language has
Speaker 2: to have some structure, right. So we're just starting, I think,
Speaker 2: to look at this and some reasearers might say, well,
Speaker 2: we've looked at all of it, and they don't. But
Speaker 2: you know, honestly, we haven't had the tools.
Speaker 1: I don't think.
Speaker 2: Now we have machine learning and AI, and these tools
Speaker 2: are going to at least help us identify some of
Speaker 2: these patterns and structures.
Speaker 1: It just a curmed I guess there's sort of three things, right.
Speaker 1: There's a certain pattern of behavior in terms of the
Speaker 1: calls they make during certain activities. There's the idea of vocabulary,
Speaker 1: like do certain sounds correspond to certain things or concepts?
Speaker 1: And then there's the concept book language, which is like
Speaker 1: are these words arranged in specific orders? I guess you're
Speaker 1: saying that we're not quite sure where in that spectrum
Speaker 1: dolphins are yet.
Speaker 3: That's correct.
Speaker 2: So imagine going into your friend's house and having dinner
Speaker 2: at the dinner table and recording the conversation with the
Speaker 2: larger family structure, and you play it later. Would you
Speaker 2: know if they're talking about the mashed potatoes or are
Speaker 2: they talking about what the kids did in school today?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Or what are your plans for tomorrow? So we can say, yeah,
Speaker 2: the dolphins make these sounds when they're forging, but are
Speaker 2: they just hunting sounds and this helps them find their prey?
Speaker 2: Are they saying, hey, Stubby, there's a big fish over here,
Speaker 2: or let's go yesterday to that same place where we
Speaker 2: found the good fish. We don't know, right, And that's
Speaker 2: part of the key to language, right. So that's what
Speaker 2: we don't know.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot we don't know about how dolphins communicate.
Speaker 1: But one thing we do know that it's very rare
Speaker 1: in the animal kingdom, is that dolphins have names for
Speaker 1: each other.
Speaker 3: One thing that we know about their communication that is
Speaker 3: very cool is that they produce in individually specific sounds
Speaker 3: that are called signature whistles, and these are the closest
Speaker 3: analog to our names in the animal world. So each
Speaker 3: dolphin has their own specific whistle. That's why it's called signature,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of like our signature is our own thing,
Speaker 3: and so that's individual identifiers. And so that's been something
Speaker 3: that's been really interesting to study. And they use them
Speaker 3: in some ways like we do, in other ways not
Speaker 3: so for example, they will often produce their own signature whistle,
Speaker 3: which is not something that we typically do because we
Speaker 3: don't usually walk around saying our own names a lot.
Speaker 3: But we also usually can see each other, whereas they
Speaker 3: usually can't see each other. So because the water is
Speaker 3: very murky, if they're sort of spread out feeding, that
Speaker 3: what we might often hear them sort of calling out
Speaker 3: occasionally I'm over here, I'm over here, I'm over here,
Speaker 3: just by using their own signature whistle, or maybe they're
Speaker 3: meeting another group as they travel and they want to,
Speaker 3: you know, say who they are something like that.
Speaker 1: Is it sort of like if we humans we're all
Speaker 1: living in the dark or in a giant cave we
Speaker 1: can't see, we would be basically doing the same thing
Speaker 1: all the time, saying like, hey, I'm here. It's hoorheyge
Speaker 1: or hey here hey kind of is that what you mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we would have to all be saying
Speaker 3: our names periodically because we couldn't see each other, and
Speaker 3: you know, we normally rely on site. But they don't
Speaker 3: have that. Wow, I mean, they don't have that capacity
Speaker 3: just because the water is generally very muky.
Speaker 1: It's just like you said, it's about checking in with
Speaker 1: the rest of the group. Yeah, So dolphins have names.
Speaker 1: Each dolphin has a sound that identifies them and they
Speaker 1: say it a lot. About fifty percent of all the
Speaker 1: calls of dolphin makes is their signature whistle. As doctor
Speaker 1: Saying mentioned, it's hard to see underwater dolphins of sonar,
Speaker 1: so they can tell where other dolphins are, but they
Speaker 1: can't visually recognize each other. So one reason for having
Speaker 1: these names and saying them that so they can keep
Speaker 1: track of each other. And actually, we've thought about these
Speaker 1: names since the nineteen sixties. I guess at what age
Speaker 1: does that name get cemented or generated.
Speaker 3: It's certainly usually within the first three months. That's been
Speaker 3: documented through actually studies of animals held in captivity by
Speaker 3: the people who discovered signature whistles. Melba and David Caldwell.
Speaker 3: They discovered signatre whistles actually back in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 3: and in that work they sampled more than one hundred
Speaker 3: dolphins that were held in different facilities at the time,
Speaker 3: and they would record them in isolation, so just you know,
Speaker 3: briefly put a dolphin in one place outside of other dolphins,
Speaker 3: so that they were able to say, Okay, this whistle
Speaker 3: is definitely coming from this dolphins And in that context,
Speaker 3: they tend to make a lot of signature whistles because
Speaker 3: they're probably trying to contact their groupmates, saying hey, I'm
Speaker 3: over here, I'm over here, I'm over here. So usually
Speaker 3: if you isolate a dolphin, you will pretty quickly be
Speaker 3: able to identify it's signature whistle.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess if I get separated from a group
Speaker 1: in a giant dark cave, I would be like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, or here trying to
Speaker 1: get back right.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're very social animals, So.
Speaker 1: Each dolphin has their own signature whistle. Do dolphins ever
Speaker 1: say the signature whistle of another dolphin?
Speaker 3: Yes, they do. They copy each other's signature whistles. We've
Speaker 3: seen that quite commonly so there's maybe two animals that
Speaker 3: we're recording, and sometimes we'll see one of them make
Speaker 3: the other dolphin signature whistle, which is probably sort of
Speaker 3: a way of being like, hey, you over there or whatever,
Speaker 3: something like that, come on over my way, or who
Speaker 3: knows what you know, something along those lines. But we
Speaker 3: are super interested in trying to see whether dolphins actually
Speaker 3: make signature whistles of animals that aren't with them. That
Speaker 3: would be, you know, something pretty exciting because that would
Speaker 3: really suggest that they have sort of a representation of
Speaker 3: that animal in their head. You know. It's different from
Speaker 3: if you're with another animal and they're making their whistle
Speaker 3: and you make their whistle back at some point to them,
Speaker 3: you're hearing it, you're sort of copying it. That's really
Speaker 3: different than like being swimming around and maybe thinking like, oh,
Speaker 3: I wonder if you know Bob's here, and then making
Speaker 3: Bob's whistle or something like that. It's a bit of
Speaker 3: a holy grail, honestly, and studying animal communication is this
Speaker 3: idea of whether animals have these abstract representations for things
Speaker 3: or other animals interesting.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like if you and I are in
Speaker 1: a dark cave together, I might be like Orte here,
Speaker 1: Jorge and Hoorte, and you might be saying Leayla here,
Speaker 1: Layla here, here, Leila, and then I might start saying
Speaker 1: Laila Leila also just to sort of like maybe echo
Speaker 1: or connect with you. Yeah, like right, But if you're
Speaker 1: not there and I say your name, that could be
Speaker 1: maybe a sign that I'm thinking of you and that
Speaker 1: I know that you're an individual person and I'm wondering
Speaker 1: where you are.
Speaker 3: Maybe right exactly, or even potentially talking about me to
Speaker 3: somebody else, although that's getting a whole other layer further.
Speaker 1: Down that I'm not dolphin gossip, yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to imply that that's happening yet to anyway.
Speaker 3: Who knows. We might yet discover that, but yeah, that
Speaker 3: would be a pretty cool thing if we were able
Speaker 3: to document that.
Speaker 1: So those are signature whistles. Another cool thing we've learned
Speaker 1: about how dolphins talk to each other is that they
Speaker 1: can have an accent.
Speaker 3: Although there is one other thing about signature whistles. I
Speaker 3: might just mention quickly because it's so fascinating. But just
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago, we did a study where
Speaker 3: we found that mother dolphins use something similar to what
Speaker 3: we call mother eaves, where they will modify their signature
Speaker 3: whistles when they're communicating with their calves by raising the
Speaker 3: highest frequency of their whistles. So it's kind of like
Speaker 3: what we do when we're talking with like infants or children.
Speaker 3: Human caregivers tend to talk and kind of a more
Speaker 3: sing songy voice. I pitch sing songy voice, and so
Speaker 3: it really seems like dolphins do a similar thing.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like if I was with a group
Speaker 1: of fans, that'd be like, or here a porge, this
Speaker 1: is Orge. But if I was trying to get to
Speaker 1: my kid to see, like here's daddy, Daddy's here, Daddy's here?
Speaker 1: Is that kind of you? What do you mean to
Speaker 1: make that?
Speaker 3: I think? I mean, they're still saying the same name,
Speaker 3: but they are inflecting it differently, And it's potentially like
Speaker 3: with human mother ease, it seems like there's something about
Speaker 3: that kind of more inflected speech that engages the children
Speaker 3: in some way, you know, to sort of be like,
Speaker 3: maybe it's that they know, Okay, they're talking to me now,
Speaker 3: you know that this sound is directed to me rather
Speaker 3: than to somebody else. I mean, that's one possible hypothesis.
Speaker 3: When mom makes her whistle a little bit higher, the
Speaker 3: calf is like, Okay, she's she's telling me something now,
Speaker 3: you know, rather than maybe to one of the other
Speaker 3: dolphins that's around here. But that's just a hypothesis. I mean,
Speaker 3: we really don't know how it might funk him for dolphins,
Speaker 3: but it was just really cool to find that they
Speaker 3: do something similar to what we do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fascinating. So when the kid was around, they
Speaker 1: would have this.
Speaker 3: They would increase the frequency of highest frequency of their
Speaker 3: whistles so it would go up to a higher pitch
Speaker 3: when they were communicating with their calf versus when they
Speaker 3: were not communicating with a calf.
Speaker 1: Yes, it seems that dolphins also baby talk when talking
Speaker 1: to babies. Okay, so that's what we know about how
Speaker 1: dolphins talk to each other. Now the question is can
Speaker 1: we use what we know to talk to them? Could
Speaker 1: we use AI to decode the words they use or
Speaker 1: try to teach them new words, or what would happen
Speaker 1: to be said their names back to them. As it
Speaker 1: turns out, both our experts have tried to do this.
Speaker 1: So when we come back, we'll talk about actually talking
Speaker 1: to dolphins, and I don't want to oversell it, but
Speaker 1: it's going to be fantastic. Okay, that was a dull
Speaker 1: fin joke. The point is, stay with us, give you
Speaker 1: right back, Hey, welcome back. We're talking about talking to dolphins,
Speaker 1: and so far we've learned about the social structure they
Speaker 1: have and what we know about how they communicate with
Speaker 1: each other. Now the question is could we use any
Speaker 1: of this to have a conversation with them as it happens.
Speaker 1: The two dolphin experts in our show today have tried
Speaker 1: to do this in two very different ways, and they
Speaker 1: both sort of work. The first approach is to play
Speaker 1: back to dolphins' words we think we've learned from them first,
Speaker 1: how doctor Lei la Seig describes it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's and being focused. If I worked for
Speaker 3: the last couple of years, and it was only maybe
Speaker 3: about ten years ago or so that we were doing
Speaker 3: some experiments where we playback sounds to dolphins, and I
Speaker 3: noticed multiple different dolphins making a similar whistle in response
Speaker 3: to those playbacks, and I remember being like, what's going
Speaker 3: on here? Like this is so crazy, Like I didn't
Speaker 3: expect anything like that, And I remember being really blown
Speaker 3: away and actually like contacting my colleague and saying, you know,
Speaker 3: you're not gonna believe this, but I'm seeing like multiple
Speaker 3: dolphins making a really similar response here, and so that
Speaker 3: kind of launched this whole direction of my research focused
Speaker 3: on what we call shared non signature whistles. So these
Speaker 3: are not signature whistles, but there are types of whistles
Speaker 3: that are produced by multiple dolphins. So it's not just
Speaker 3: some random whistle. There's like these different whistle that lots
Speaker 3: and lots of different dolphins make. And so we now
Speaker 3: are really trying to understand what do those mean? Do
Speaker 3: those have you know, specific meanings the way potentially a
Speaker 3: phrase or a word might for us. You know, we
Speaker 3: don't know the answer to that, but that's what we're
Speaker 3: trying to find out through playbacks. By playing back these
Speaker 3: sounds of dolphins and observing how they respond.
Speaker 1: I see fascinating. Can you describe your experiment in a
Speaker 1: little bit more detail. You played bad non signature whistled
Speaker 1: sound that you recorded, but you don't know what it means.
Speaker 1: You just recorded a sound.
Speaker 3: Right, There's one particular whistle type that I have like
Speaker 3: a hunch that it's produced in response to kind of
Speaker 3: a surprising sound. So it seems like that could be
Speaker 3: some kind of like a what was that sort of sound.
Speaker 3: It's not so much that we think that that whistle
Speaker 3: probably represents something, you know, the way like the word
Speaker 3: chair means a chair, but it might be more like
Speaker 3: something like a dolphin going wait, what was that?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yes, doctor Sayik thinks she might have decoded the
Speaker 1: first ever dolphin word in history, and that word could
Speaker 1: be the dolphin equivalent of what the F, which kind
Speaker 1: of makes sense. Actually, if a dolphin scientist suddenly jumped
Speaker 1: out of the water and started saying strange sounds to us,
Speaker 1: what the F would probably be the most common thing
Speaker 1: you would hear back from humans. Okay, what really intreagued
Speaker 1: Suctor's Ayeek about this particular whistle is that she's heard
Speaker 1: it from lots of dolphins in the community. And you
Speaker 1: find that dolphins say that this word across a community.
Speaker 1: It's like each time you go back, you're not pulling
Speaker 1: the same group of dolphins, You're pulling a totally different
Speaker 1: group and they.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's all the same one hundred and seventy dolphins.
Speaker 3: But I think I've seen at least thirty five different
Speaker 3: dolphins doing it at some point. There's one feature of
Speaker 3: the whistle that's very consistent, which is this flat, constant
Speaker 3: frequency part at the end of the whistle. And that's
Speaker 3: something very unusual because dolphins in Sara's to almost never
Speaker 3: make constant frequency whistles. And I was like, what is
Speaker 3: going on here when I first discovered it. And so
Speaker 3: it's not a totally like slam dunk.
Speaker 1: Maybe could be like a question mark at the end
Speaker 1: of their word.
Speaker 3: It could be it could be that that flat component
Speaker 3: it just adds that. But anyway, we have a lot
Speaker 3: of work to do to figure this out.
Speaker 1: What do you think of the idea of using AI?
Speaker 1: Seen that a lot in using AI and computers to
Speaker 1: try to feed it all this data and have it
Speaker 1: figure out how dolphins talk. What do you think about that?
Speaker 3: So a lot of people ask me about that. I
Speaker 3: don't personally feel that AI, at least where it stands
Speaker 3: right now, is in a place to interpret dolphin sounds.
Speaker 3: If we want to interpret what these sounds mean, I
Speaker 3: just don't see any other way to do that than
Speaker 3: to actually observe how the dolphins are using them or
Speaker 3: responding to them, Like I just don't see how an
Speaker 3: AI could interpret those sounds without that additional contextual.
Speaker 1: Data, because I guess you need to tie to the
Speaker 1: animal's behavior to be able to make those confusions. But
Speaker 1: right now the data is not connected to behavior or
Speaker 1: observations exactly.
Speaker 3: Most of the uses that I know of of AI
Speaker 3: on a large scale with animal vocalizations has involved so
Speaker 3: just feeding the vocalizations into an AI, having it spit
Speaker 3: out patterns, which could be super interesting, but that's what
Speaker 3: they are at this point. They are patterns, and we
Speaker 3: don't know if they mean anything to the animals. So
Speaker 3: you have to get out there and watch them while
Speaker 3: they're producing them and see are they doing something different
Speaker 3: when they make it this way versus that way. But
Speaker 3: without that information, to me, it could just be random.
Speaker 3: It could just be noise. It could be like us
Speaker 3: clearing our throat, you know, or something like that. We
Speaker 3: just don't know.
Speaker 1: I see. It'd be like trying to understand human language
Speaker 1: just from recordings of us talking without any context of
Speaker 1: whether we were in pairs or in a group, or
Speaker 1: distress or having fun or eating or anything.
Speaker 3: Right, It's really lacking that context, which is really crucial
Speaker 3: when you want to understand what sounds mean.
Speaker 1: I'll make it bad joke. It's almost like you need
Speaker 1: to know the poor poise of the word.
Speaker 3: That's very true though.
Speaker 1: That's a good one, all right. The second way that
Speaker 1: scientists have tried to talk to dolphins has been to
Speaker 1: try to teach dolphins you words to them. Here's for
Speaker 1: Denise Herzing. Okay, so there's the idea of trying to
Speaker 1: understand how dolphins communicate. But then a part of your
Speaker 1: work has been on maybe another approach. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about that? Sure, well, we do
Speaker 1: a little bit of both.
Speaker 2: Two way communication is about interacting actively to try to communicate,
Speaker 2: versus just standing by and observing, recording and trying to
Speaker 2: decode what you see in here and not interacting.
Speaker 1: So in this case with the dolphins, what's the scenario, Capain,
Speaker 1: it's a picture of what's involved.
Speaker 2: Well, our two way system involves underwater computers. So they
Speaker 2: are little aloneum casings we wear on our torso well,
Speaker 2: right now it actually has a pixel phone in it.
Speaker 2: It's really off the shelf now, but it's got preprogrammed
Speaker 2: sounds that we have labeled for different toys. The dolphins
Speaker 2: like to play with for example, and it's got a
Speaker 2: powerful real time recognition program. So when a dolphin might
Speaker 2: mimic that whistle, then the computer would tell the human researcher,
Speaker 2: who's wearing also a head, said it hurt a match,
Speaker 2: And so a dolphin is trying pretty hard to mimic
Speaker 2: that sound.
Speaker 1: So the scenario is that a scientist a diver will
Speaker 1: dive down with this device and then they'll sort of
Speaker 1: wave a toy around. What does that particle look like?
Speaker 2: So our normal protocol would we get in the water
Speaker 2: and we might have this device on, but we're not
Speaker 2: going to use it unless the dolphins want to interact
Speaker 2: with us. Now, if the dolphins start playing with us,
Speaker 2: they offer us a toy, they start interacting, then we
Speaker 2: might go into our play protocol. So let's try to
Speaker 2: label this toy they brought over.
Speaker 1: Then they'll do that. They'll like bring up and say
Speaker 1: sort of like a dog like here, ball here, let's
Speaker 1: play really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they'll offer us piece of sarcasm or seagras.
Speaker 2: Sarcasm is a piece of algae basically, Okay, so I
Speaker 2: can push my little keypad on my box playing the
Speaker 2: whistle for sarcasm. I can ask them for it, or
Speaker 2: I can wave it and say sarcasm while I'm playing
Speaker 2: the whistle.
Speaker 3: And the idea is to expose.
Speaker 1: Them to it. Okay, So the idea here is to
Speaker 1: basically teach dolphins' words the same way you might teach
Speaker 1: your dog the word ball or sin or water. Scientists
Speaker 1: would play with dolphins and try to get them to
Speaker 1: learn that a certain whistle means sea grass or algae,
Speaker 1: and then they would try to get the animals to
Speaker 1: say the whistle back to them when the dolphins wanted
Speaker 1: to refer to seagrass or culture. And it sort of worked.
Speaker 2: So we had some interesting reactions and some suggestive data,
Speaker 2: but nothing earth shattering and nothing to really show that
Speaker 2: they would see the functionality of these different sounds. Now,
Speaker 2: I think in captive studies they've gotten a little further
Speaker 2: with that because they have more time with the animals.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's gone very far, but at least you.
Speaker 2: Can see maybe they understand the different function of these
Speaker 2: signals and objects. So part of the big debate I
Speaker 2: think among scientists is that if they a dolphin in captivity,
Speaker 2: darts being able to understand semantics and syntax, which they
Speaker 2: have especially in Hawaii at lu Herman's old lab there.
Speaker 2: The question is, Okay, so we know they have the
Speaker 2: flexibility to do that in their brains, but we still
Speaker 2: don't know if they use it in their own system, right,
Speaker 2: I see. So you could have an animal that's exposed
Speaker 2: to human culture and to these kinds of things and
Speaker 2: they learn they're like, oh, I'm flexible, I can figure
Speaker 2: this out. But that doesn't mean they have a language
Speaker 2: in their own communications system. So that's a big debate
Speaker 2: as well. So lots of things we don't know.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that's kind of the state of the art
Speaker 1: of talking to dolphins. You're starting to catalog all the
Speaker 1: sounds they make, and there are possible breakthroughs with some sounds.
Speaker 1: And we also know dolphins could learn sounds from us,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't necessarily tell us how they communicate among themselves.
Speaker 1: Of course, the bigger question is if we could talk
Speaker 1: to dolphins, what will we say to them? What would
Speaker 1: it mean for us people to understand dolphins and what
Speaker 1: they're saying to each other.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that would be amazing. I mean
Speaker 3: that's because I just feel like the possibility is for
Speaker 3: complexity in their communication system, given that they do learn
Speaker 3: and have this flexible communication system. I just think it's
Speaker 3: just super exciting and I think it'll be really eye opening.
Speaker 1: Just kind of understanding how this animal, what it's like
Speaker 1: to be this animal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly, like how they interact with each other
Speaker 3: and what kinds of things they do and kind of
Speaker 3: communicate with each other.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating how they see and hear the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: The last question here, if we figure out how they communicate,
Speaker 1: what would you want to tell or ask a dolphin
Speaker 1: or a group of dolphins.
Speaker 2: So that's my question. I always ask people that question really,
Speaker 2: So for me, it would just be more about learning, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, what do you think about It's important to you?
Speaker 2: And I'm sure there's all sort of secrets if we
Speaker 2: could ever ask them in detail about the ocean, I
Speaker 2: can tell us all sorts of things about the ocean,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: I think it.
Speaker 2: Could just be as simple as finding common ground. I
Speaker 2: think what it could do for us is give us
Speaker 2: a fuller respect of other species and that hey, we
Speaker 2: all have a right to be here. They have their
Speaker 2: own lives, they have full interesting lives. You know, I
Speaker 2: think as humans we have to be careful. Is it
Speaker 2: about us or is it about them?
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah, it sounds like maybe the question is not
Speaker 1: can we talk to dolphins, but whether dolphins want to
Speaker 1: talk to us?
Speaker 2: There you go, it's a good way of stating it.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: All right, Well it sounds like we might be able
Speaker 1: to talk to dolphins in the future, in which case
Speaker 1: we should probably figure out if we are a species
Speaker 1: worth talking to. Thanks for joining us, See you next
Speaker 1: time you've been listening to Science Stuff. Production of iHeartRadio,
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