Researchers 'speak' to dolphins in their own language | Hacker News Reader

Researchers 'speak' to dolphins in their own language

wakeup-world.com

157 pointsauxbuss34 comments

I don't intend this as an ad hominem, but is there any independent verification of this research?

It might just be me, but it's hard not to be skeptical given that that the website has a banner declaring a campaign to end "chemtrails" and its sidebar is devoted to article topics such as "Ancient Aliens".

I linked to the original source below, which is a little woo-ey in spirit, but seems sincere, at least. I agree it's unfortunate that this isn't already wrapped in the language of science and academia, but if these results are true that should happen well within the next decade. I think the point of skepticism or thing to investigate is the CymaScope -- where there is room to falsify these results, it is via that device. http://www.cymascope.com/cetacean.html

http://www.cymascope.com/soundsfun.html

Take a look at the second video. It seems that they're using something like the resonance plate here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf0t4qIVWF4

(Wikipedia suggests they're named Chladni plates? I've seen them before in a physics class, but I don't know if that's really their proper name or not. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Chladni )

Edit: I didn't notice it before, but they actually demonstrate the same sort of device further down on the page, also calling it a 'Chladni plate'

As Figs [1], jgeralnik, and CWuestefeld [2] have pointed out there might also be a huge problem in their methodology.

Let's say that we have created an immersive environment for a mouse, so that we can replay what the mouse would see if it saw a piece of cheese similar to the way they've played back that sonar ping. If the mouse starts running towards it/"identifies" it, would that mean the mouse has developed a complex visual language? No, it would just mean that the mouse has seen the cheese!

Unless they have conclusive proof that a dolphin directly sends a pre-modulated imprint of the object it just revealed, then their experiment is probably making a similar mistake somewhere or the other.

I think that there is a better way to design this experiment. One of the better ways to conclusively test this hypothesis would be to teach a dolphin tool use to get food and see if it can teach others to do the same. To ensure that simple imitation isn't going on, we could keep a hydrophone immersed for the entire duration and continually record what's happening.

If other dolphins learn how to use the tool, then I would move on to the next step and see if they can work together in teams. If they display co-ordination then we would have conclusive proof of language use.

Has anyone ever done rigorous research like this?

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315023 [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3314522

Well, we already know that they can use tools and teach each other (somehow) how to use tools: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7475 and they've been trained to follow some pretty complex commands (e.g. make up your own jump and can synchronize it with other dolphins): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ38sycAITQ

So, we already know they can coordinate, but it's not clear if there's communication ("hey, let's do XYZ") or if they're just very quick at imitation ("Hmm, looks like Akeakamai is going to do XYZ, better do XYZ").

Perhaps what we could do is set up an arena and force them to work together as a team. If we design the experiment with care then we might be able to settle the question of imitation vs. communication.

For example if we hide food beneath inside a container and put several such containers in a grid then we could see if they co-ordinate the search. We could control for imitation by making the pool pitch black and covering the dolphin's eyes, thus forcing them to use echolocation extensively, which we should be able to capture. If we can track the direction and the nature of the clicks as well as the position and subsequent actions of the dolphins after making them, then we might be able to answer this question.

I believe they are associated with the Global Heart new age spiritual movement. Which would explain the, fringe site. I see the dolphin research efforts on the news from time to time given that I am in FL and I spend a lot of time in the keys. Other people in marine research in FL treat them like a legitimate organization, doing legitimate research, but their site reveals their bias http://speakdolphin.com/home.cfm . Take it with a grain of salt but I don't know if the conspiracy site is reflective of their organization. It may be a little unfair that their message is being carried in that light. While some members of the organization may subscribe to such beliefs, it may not be all of the organization. There is most definitely marine animal conservation ambitions which is a big bias in favor of dolphins being intelligent.

To portray imagined objects to other dolphins, are they suggesting that the dolphin can imitate the 'sound echo' directly from their vocal clicks?

Therefore their clicks would have two functions: to make echos reflect from objects around them, and to imitate those echos later on?

That was my understanding of it, but I could be completely wrong.

+1 but the article isn't very clear about it

In the Uplift universe (David Brin), dolphins are regularly able to build sonic pictures for other dolphins as a way to communicate, or even as a strategy when fighting each other.

Not sure if those ideas came from then current research into dolphins, or if Brin took some artistic liberties and came up with them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_Universe

If it's true, then it's essentially image-based telepathic communication.

That's interesting. From what I understood of the article, to portray an existing object, they emit a constant sound, and the shape of the object modifies the sound which makes a unique sound (which is then transformed into an image by the receiving dolphin).

Therefore, to imagine an object they have to:

1) have the ability to create unique shape-sounds with their vocal clicks and

2a) had to have either seen/heard the shape before, OR

2b) have the ability to imagine what an imaginary object would sound like.

If research shows the way of conveying imaginary objects is 2a, that would mean dolphins are physically unable to convey abstract ideas (note: this wouldn't completely rule out abstraction, just the communication of it). If it's 2b, and they can communicate abstract concepts... that would be a monumentally profound discovery.

This seems to be the original source: I emailed the researcher and asked him to share the full results. http://www.speakdolphin.com/ResearchItems.cfm?ID=20

Dolphins in two separate research centers understood the words, presenting convincing evidence that dolphins employ a universal sono-pictorial language of communication.

Hmm... I would have assumed that interpreting dolphin sounds as pictures is the first thing you'd try after realizing they can echolocate... Is this really the first time that's been explored? Or is it just that no one's been able to figure out how to reconstruct an image properly from dolphin clicks, but it was already a widely suspected possibility for a long time? (I'm not really up to date with dolphin research, unfortunately.)

If they're right about this line of reasoning, then I wouldn't be surprised at all if they come back and point out an animation structure soon (akin to sound detection of a moving object over time) -- and if that's the case, I'd bet you that it isn't "universal", and that different groups of dolphins will have different variants in how they communicate more complex concepts. For example, one group might give an animation of a dolphin swimming around something in one direction a meaning that a different group might disagree with. Another sort of animation that might be interesting to look for would be a change in the composition/texture of an object (e.g. animation of dolphin turning to stone, or stone turning into dolphin or something like that). It seems reasonable to me that even if you communicate in animated 3d images, you'd probably still have to have some less literal meanings too... and the sorts of things you could represent with something like that could get pretty complex, actually.

Hopefully the depopulation of the dolphin species (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_drive_hunting) has not caused significant loss of any complex language developed over time.

[In response to responder: Actually I think developing complex language with something like this would be relatively easy. With human language we can't just show a series of events with our words, people need to experience the things with us and then we develop common words to describe them again later. With their system of communication it seems that they could describe pretty much anything they'd find notable and also easily abstract things by just making their clicks less specific or by blending a few specific examples as a form of abstraction. Actually I'd bet on blending first, maybe even a literal superposition of all the possibilities or several of them. Also they might be able to communicate by acting things out physically while they are sounding things out. The combination could be pretty powerful for expression.]

I'm still quite skeptical that the dolphins have complex shared language with features like recursion, but it's possible that the storytelling via pictures could get complex... I guess we'll see.

It may be possible, but I can imagine that it would be very very difficult for us to grasp since if this research is verified we'd likely have so little in common linguistically. It strikes me as kind of like "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra".

Yup, I think what is novel here and led to these results is that the dolphin researchers invented a device for generically converting audio into pictures.

Looking into the device they're talking about here: http://www.cymascope.com/

Seems like a pretty cranky group unfortunately. (in the sense of astrology, physics cranks, etc.) :(

I'm thinking they may have just found a roundabout way of visualizing echolocation response rather than visualizing dolphin-dolphin communication as images. Guessing on the bits I've gathered from the various articles linked, it sounds like what they did was something like:

  - have a dolphin ping various objects with echolocation and record the response
  - play back the response for different dolphins and reward the dolphins with fish if they retrieve the object that matches the recording
  - see how good the dolphins are figuring out the mapping from sounds to objects (pretty good)

That's just my guess of what they did; as I said, it's not clear. (If that's actually what they did, that doesn't really indicate language capability, although it's still interesting.) Hopefully they clarify what their methodology was.

4 days and no answer..

They reflected sounds off of objects and played them back. This is not a language, that's how echolocation works!

This is how I read it, too.

It sounds like they showed the dolphin a picture, just using an auditory representation rather than graphical. Then the dolphin pointed to the depicted object.

I'm pretty sure that a human baby, without any language skills, could do the same if the depiction were graphical.

It seems to me that they've found out something about the dolphin perceptual system. This is interesting, but I don't see what it has to do with language.

The trick is that they've observed the dolphins doing the same thing. We've just demonstrated that they can coherently transfer nouns. That's a big deal.

I agree that it's interesting. I just don't see that it's language.

Consider this [1] article on language, discussing the properties of language. It seems that what has been discovered fails this in at least two ways. We haven't demonstrated, or even claimed, any sort of grammar; and what's being communicated isn't symbolic, but directly representational.

- - QUOTE - -

Languages are not just sets of symbols. They also contain a grammar, or system of rules, used to manipulate the symbols. While a set of symbols may be used for expression or communication, it is primitive and relatively unexpressive, because there are no clear or regular relationships between the symbols. Because a language also has a grammar, it can manipulate its symbols to express clear and regular relationships between them.

...

Another important property of language is the arbitrariness of the symbols. Any symbol can be mapped onto any concept (or even onto one of the rules of the grammar). For instance, there is nothing about the Spanish word nada itself that forces Spanish speakers to use it to mean nothing. That is the meaning all Spanish speakers have memorized for that sound pattern. But for Croatian speakers nada means hope.

- - END QUOTE - -

[1] http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Language#Properties_of_lang...

>Another important property of language is the arbitrariness of the symbols. Any symbol can be mapped onto any concept (or even onto one of the rules of the grammar). For instance, there is nothing about the Spanish word nada itself that forces Spanish speakers to use it to mean nothing.

How about "mother", "no" sounding so similar in multitude of completely different languages? Your quote mistakenly attributes a property of human's mind - the ability to separate meaning from symbol - as a property of language. Shaka, when the walls fell.

How about "mother", "no" sounding so similar in multitude of completely different languages?

How many languages are we talking about. The Indo-European languages cover most of Eurasia excluding the far east. They are similar because they are related.

I imagine other large language families on other continents are also related. How similar are "mother" and "no" or "yes" in languages which share no relation? Aboriginal and Spanish? Basque and Japanese? Bantu and Inuit? The click language of the bushmen and Mandarin Chinese? Etc..

http://www.mothersdaycelebration.com/mother-in-different-lan...

" The slight smacking movement of the lips made in uttering an m-sound is similar to the lip movement required to suck a nipple."

http://www.billcasselman.com/wording_room/mother.htm

From your top link:

Africaans is a dialect of Dutch - European language.

Albanian - European.

Arabic - the first non Indo-European language in this list and what do you know, no leading "m-sound". More like the opposite of that.

Aymara, Azeri and Basque are also all non Indo-European and what do you, also no leading "m-sound".

The list continues with a whole pile of Slavic and other European language, holy crap "mother" in Bosnian and Bulgarian sounds really similar - what a shock!

I'm just scanning through the list now, Hawaiian seems to be the firs non Indo-European language to have the "ma" sound. I bet if you look you'll find the "ma" sound in whole pile of other Hawaiian words too! Are they all about sucking?

Hungarian is in Europe but is a Finno-Uguric language and again no "m-sound".

Indonesian no "ma" sound. And I'm tired of proving my point.

This "the sound of the world for mother is similar to suckling" seems like utter bullshit to me.

Leading with the m-sound just happens to be common in the Indo-European language family.

And I don't even know what the heck your second link is!?

Now to setup buoys around Japanese fishing grounds that echo "Danger!"

Interesting. Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3312324

Let's hope they figure out the rest of the dolphins' vocabulary before they tell us "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!"

Uplifting, anyone?

Pump the 'phins full of nootropics and start teaching them useful stuff :)

Darwin love Bridger

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