Dolphins Highly Developed Spoken Language

Dolphins Highly Developed Spoken Language

As many people believe, humans may be the only form of life that communicates with each other using a highly developed spoken language. According to new studies involving dolphins, this may no longer be the case.

Dolphins intelligence goes far beyond learning hand movements and commands from humans. Dolphins can actually communicate with one another with a highly developed spoken language akin to the human language. As we already knew, dolphins whistle and use echolocation, but their language is far more advanced than that. Dolphins are able to speak to one another in complete sentences containing up to five words according to researchers at Karadag Nature Reserve in Feodosia, Ukraine. These researchers conducted a study between two dolphins which showed that they use different frequencies of whistles and different levels of pulses to have conversations. According to lead researcher Dr Vyacheslav Ryabov, “Essentially, this exchange resembles a conversation between two people. Each pulse that is produced by dolphins is different from another by its appearance in the time domain and by the set of spectral components in the frequency domain.”

Australian researchers in 2007 identified specific whistles and pules, and believes

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that dolphins actually have names for each other, and say things like ‘I’m here, where is everyone?’, ‘Hurry up’ and ‘There’s food over here’. Dolphins will actually wait until the other is done talking, then respond. Each dolphin has their own specific whistle that they use, which we classify as their names. These whistles are typically used between a mother and a calf.

Another interesting component of the new research is demonstrating how animals can evolve an ability, lose it, and then evolve it again. Madsen, a researcher in the Department of Biological Sciences at Aarhus University presented his theory of “dolphin language” to his research team as early as 1977, “The land-based ancestors of dolphins likely produced sounds as humans do, lost that skill when they went into water, and then evolved it again.” Though