Exercise 8, page 117.0:01
Do you speak dolphinese?0:14
Dr. Denise Herzing knows the names of all the members of the pod of wild spotted dolphins she studies.0:22
She knows who the grandparents are and when their grandchildren were born.0:30
She recognizes scars on flippers and can remember when the wounds first appeared.0:35
When the dolphins appear, she mimics their behavior by swimming upside down to say hello.0:42
She is very familiar with each individual dolphin.0:50
This isn't surprising as she has shared 27 summers off the Florida coast and has had over 2,600 encounters with dolphins.0:53
She has spent more time with dolphins than anyone else on Earth.1:04
But this is still not enough for Denise.1:09
"I want to know what they're thinking," she says.1:12
In fact, Denise has already spent years experimenting with communicating with the dolphins, but her greatest wish is that one day very soon the dolphins will be able to speak back and tell her what's on their minds.1:16
Dolphins have the second most evolved brain on the planet after the human race, and they are highly sociable and intelligent and remarkably skilled at problem solving.1:33
They live in a complex society in which, together with friends and relatives, they raise their young, share responsibilities, and resolve conflicts.1:44
So clever are these aquatic mammals that they can understand up to 200 human words, using gestures and symbols, and even the difference between a statement and a question.1:56
So far, however, attempts to talk with dolphins have been mostly one-way.2:09
Many studies ask dolphins to respond to human commands, using fish as a reward, but rarely do we ask dolphins to seek something from us, says Dr. Herzing.2:14
Denise knows that it won't be easy to get dolphins to speak to us.2:27
Both the vocal cords of humans and dolphins and the sounds they produce are extremely different.2:31
Dolphins communicate with whistles, clicks, and other sounds, some of which are too high frequency for humans to make out.2:38
"They live in a sensory world we can only imagine, full of different sounds, sights, and tastes," Dr. Herzinger explains.2:47
Her elegant solution, therefore, was to come up with a new, simple language that both humans and dolphins could share.2:56
Her latest experiment involves a small waterproof computer that divers will wear, called CHAT.3:05
Cetacean Hearing and Telemetry.3:12
It will send out one of 8 signals that correspond to something in the undersea world, seaweed for example.3:16
The computer will listen to see if the dolphins mimic the signals.3:24
After the system has learnt dolphin, all the sounds that dolphins make will then be put through the computer, which will try to work out patterns in them.3:29
In order to decode the vocabulary and grammar of Dolphinese.3:39
Then scientists can learn how to reply with dolphin-like signals themselves.3:45
This underwater translator is only at the trial stage at the moment, but if it is successful, it could have a huge impact.3:52
Not only would it delight marine biologists such as Denise Herzing, but it may be possible to adapt the system to enable two-way communication with other animal species too.4:02
Scientists working at SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, have also expressed a lot of interest in the device.4:16
They hope that CHAT could be used to make contact with life in distant galaxies.4:25
Herzing says that her research may be our best training ground for exploring the cosmos for other life.4:31
Because if we can't understand life on this planet, then there is no hope for our exploration of the galaxy.4:38
Scientists like Denise Herzing hope that it's only a matter of time before we can speak to dolphins.4:45
The only question is, what on earth are they going to say to us?4:52
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