New Research: Dolphins ‘know each other’s names’...recongnize themselves..

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2168604,00.html

Janik said: “Bottlenose dolphins are the only animals other than humans to have been shown to transmit identity information independent of the caller’s voice.”

Dolphins ‘know each other’s names’
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The Sunday Times May 07, 2006
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor
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Whistles are used for individual recognition
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DOLPHINS may be closer to humans than previously realised, with new research showing they communicate by whistling out their own “names”.

The evidence suggests dolphins share the human ability to recognise themselves and other members of the same species as individuals with separate identities. The research, on wild bottlenose dolphins, will lead to a reassessment of their intelligence and social complexity, raising moral questions over how they should be treated.

(snip)

He said: “Each animal develops an individually distinctive signature whistle in the first few months of its life, which appears to be used in individual recognition.”

(snip)

In the study some of the Sarasota Bay animals were corralled in a net. The researchers then played synthetic versions of the signature whistles of other dolphins through underwater loudspeakers to see if they would evoke a response in the captive animals. The use of synthetic whistles ruled out the possibility that the animals might simply be recognising the sound of each other’s voices.

They found that dolphins responded strongly to the whistles of their relatives and associates while generally ignoring those of dolphins to whom they had no link.

Janik said: “Bottlenose dolphins are the only animals other than humans to have been shown to transmit identity information independent of the caller’s voice.”

(snip)

link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2168604,00.html

"In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth."

~~ Henry Beston - Naturalist

of course i think that this science merely confirms what those scientists{and otheres} already very strongly suspected.

on edit:
they'll find other animals like elephants do the same.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

Thanks for posting! :)

whenever I read about sentient dolphins. (Just because we don't acknowledge their intelligence doesn't mean that they don't have it.) The only thing that makes them different from Homo Sapiens(?) is the lack of hands- makes tool using difficult. Otherwise, the dominant species on Planet Earth might have been the dolphins.

They probably would have done a better job. Sigh.

"...Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved
so much... the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck
about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more
intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons."

Star Trek IV: A Voyage Home...

It is indeed a pity that we're only finding this out now, when overfishing, pollution, and global warming are wreaking havoc on the oceans. It was bas enough when we humans were (and still are, in some places) happily exterminating ourselves, but it looks like we may well have extended the not-so-accidental killing of sentients into the seas, too.

I occasionally wonder if the mass beachings we read about are the cetaceans' version of the sit-ins and the lie-ins to attempt to get the humans' attention so that we'd stop killing them. If so, it doesn't seem to be working; we humans are too smug and too anthropocentric to get the message.

I swear I heard this years ago. In fact, I know I saw something about it on the Discovery channel or something like that, and I've always thought it was one of the cooler things about dolphins since then. :)

...research...what is new is that this idea is less speculative now...more evidence...

Chimpanzees?

Gorillas?

I would imagine other species have the capacity, we just haven't figured out their 'lingo'.

such as parrots and ravens/crows.

:evilgrin: :spank: :spank: :spank: :spank:

since forever. The woman who used to do dolphin swims off Leeward O'ahu (near Makaha surfing beach) went so far as to coin her own!

The same woman took me to a lab that had been set up in a dolphin tank elsewhere on the island, in which bottlenose dolphins had learned to use a computer that had been fitted with a special touch screen. The dolphins touched one quadrant of the screen with their rostrum ("beak") to activate whatever function was displayed in that quadrant.

The delphine "killer app"? Video of other dolphins, especially those that they knew and had later been moved to different tanks. DU = Dolphins Underwater? :-)

Of course, who says they don't alraedy have their own religion

Of course I suspect that the cetacean's equivalent of Jesus was probably martyred in a fishing net instead of being nailed to a cross, and that the fishing net was weaved and set by humans.

I'm surprised more humans haven't tried copycatting them, but that's our problem... OTOH, what does the third dolphin do anyway - cheer them on?! "Go Oorga! You can do it too, Bloohgha!"

there's a lot of rape in the dolphin world

is the lack of thumbs.

OUR FEARS THEY WILL CUSS LIKE SAILORS

There was a study showing that they called each other by name. I saw it a few months ago, so I don't have a link.

'Oh, Shit,' Says Humanity

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28315

(one of my all-time favorite Onion stories)

Stupid Dolphins.