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.1:16
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.1:23
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 the 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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