Recent computer analysis has shown that dolphin whistles are far more complex than previously suspected. Also many sounds made by dolphins fall outside the range of natural human perception and can be detected only using electronic aids. Recent work on dolphin whistles, studying wild dolphins, shows that the whistles are well structured and are often deliberately modified by the dolphin. If they speak a language, its expression might be drastically altered under captive conditions. However, this work was done using captive animals. But early research indicated that most of a dolphin's vocalisations are simply repeats of this signature whistle. If presented with two separate whistling sounds they can repeat and combine them together.ĭolphins possess signature whistles characteristic of each animal - its name if you will.
Dolphins are good mimics and can imitate whistling sounds presented to them.
Some of these are made for echolocation but what about the others? The most conspicuous sounds are whistles. These have been described as "blats, bleats, chirps, clicks, creaks, pulses, quacks, racs, rasps, squeals, squawks, wails and whistles". The brain to body ratio of the dolphin is the largest of any non-human mammal and is twice as great as the chimpanzee.ĭolphins can vocalise many sounds. Tursiops' brains are large and well developed. MOST studies have been done on the Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphin Tursiops truncatus. The dolphin is considered to be the most linguistically promising because of its large brain size and because of the range of sounds it can make. But several animal species are capable of one or more of these abilities, e.g. prevarication, reference to past or future events, reference to objects not present, symbolic representation, etc. Language is defined by several characteristics, e.g. We are all familiar with the aggressive bark of the dog or the odour emitted by the bitch in heat to signal sexual receptivity to the male. Of course it is clear that animals do communicate with each other, which simply means that information is transferred. It is generally accepted by linguists that only humans speak language. These noises could be a means of communication, but are they, in fact, a language - do dolphins speak? This question is discussed in a fascinating article by marine biologist Jim Mastro in the Nov/Dec 1999 issue of The Sciences. They made lots of whistling and clicking noises. It was my first time seeing these creatures up close and, like the rest of the audience, I was delighted with their cleverness and sense of fun. I attended a display by dolphins at an aquarium in France during the summer.
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