
Dolphins Call Each Other By Name - rblion
http://news.discovery.com/animals/whales-dolphins/dolphins-call-each-other-by-name-130219.htm
======
srean
They are also known to build difficult to make toys (air bubble vortex rings)
to entertain themselves.

They have to _discover_ how to make it. Sometimes they can be quite
possessive, they would break the toy if someone not so knowledgeable wants to
play with it. Once a dolphin figures it out how to make one, his/her peers
eventually figure it out too. So it kind of spreads within a group like
fashion. This behavior has been observed both in captivity and in the wild.

<https://www.google.com/search?q=dolphin+vortex+ring> (a time sink right here)

They also have what appears to be fratricide were they bludgeon another to
death targeting vital organs (I dont have a reference to this, but I recall
reading it on BBC).

I have seen dumber people on and around TV.

I am sure there are HN'ers who are divers and have first had experience with
dolphins, we would love to hear the stories.

~~~
stcredzero
_> They also have what appears to be fratricide were they bludgeon another to
death targeting vital organs_

Apparently Orcas have developed this Kung-fu like thing, where they can kill a
shark _by just holding it_.

[http://worldtourwhilediving.com/2012/01/13/orca-flips-
over-g...](http://worldtourwhilediving.com/2012/01/13/orca-flips-over-great-
white-shark-dinner-is-served-for-willys-family/)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
This is a form of "tonic immobility" in sharks (chickens have the same
reaction if held whilst looking at a line drawn away from them)

It's an attempt to feign death / stand immobile whilst danger passes.

Its effective in sharks as they need water passing over their gills so if they
stop swimming they are dependant on current.

Of course orcas are big enough to turn a shark over - your average guy in a
chain mail suit tries this with Jaws' older brother and it's three months of
trying to get steel rings out of your teeth

~~~
PavlovsCat
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_death>

"With tiger sharks 3–4 metres (10 to 15 feet) in length, tonic immobility may
be achieved by placing hands lightly on the sides of the animal's snout
approximate to the general area surrounding its eyes."

Nah, that sounds easy.. ^^

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I have a plan - we post the above link on Reddit then we put a hundred bucks
on what the next Darwin Award winner dies of

:-)

------
ComputerGuru
Any thread on dolphins is not complete without a link to the 1992 NYT article
on dolphins: [[http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/18/science/dolphin-
courtship-...](http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/18/science/dolphin-courtship-
brutal-cunning-and-complex.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm)]

Here's the sad part: none of this is new. 1992. 1992. Over twenty years ago.

As children they make a best friend for life, they form complicated alliances
for mutual benefit, they form _political_ alliances/gangs, they help each
other out both tit-for-tat and "pro-bono" while keep score of debts (I help
you today, you will owe me _at some undefined point in the future_ ), they
group together to accomplish tasks (sometimes/often at the expense of other
dolphins, for instance a female they are trying to get with).

Another important study was done to research the presence (or lack thereof) of
a universal dolphin "language" (EDIT: found source! [[http://wakeup-
world.com/2011/11/28/the-discovery-of-dolphin-...](http://wakeup-
world.com/2011/11/28/the-discovery-of-dolphin-language/)] but not peer
reviewed research). It involved showing dolphins in one aquarium a sequence of
objects (red ball, green box, etc.) and recording the sounds made, then
travelling to another aquarium _with dolphins that have never been in contact
with the first_ and playing back the sounds made, then watching the dolphins
"locate" or "identify" the object the sounds were made in response to. They
achieved an astonishing (if memory serves!) 86% accuracy rate implying audible
descriptions of objects, much in the same manner that a "bee dance" can be
universally understood across hives/colonies except it's based on actual
sounds rather than movements.</cannot find source>

Regardless of whether or not you feel dolphins deserve the title of "non-human
sentient beings" (whatever "sentient" means, it's such a non-word), I think
anyone involved in the mass slaughter of dolphins in an attempt to ransom
money should be imprisoned for being a killer (Reference: 900 dolphins killed
in Solomon Islands as black mail for raise in pay negotiations. Sorry, but f
__* them
[[http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&...](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10861279)
])

~~~
cynical2
Any thread on dolphins teeming with the usual tripe about their intelligence,
playfulness, peacefulness, and near parity (if not outright superiority) with
humanity is not complete without mentioning their tendency to commit
infanticide and kill other marine mammals for fun:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3323070/Killer-
do...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3323070/Killer-dolphins-
baffle-marine-experts.html)

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1689180/>

~~~
darkchasma
I'm confused, you use the term tripe, as to say it's misleading about their
intellect or parity, and yet give two more examples on how similar they are to
humans.

We, as humans, are peaceful, playful, intelligent, and vicious and sadistic
murderers.

------
acheron
"For instance, on the planet Earth, 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 -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about
in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always
believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the
same reasons." -- Douglas Adams

~~~
AlexanderDhoore
So long, and thanks for all the fish!

------
mtrimpe
Dolphins are exactly why I feel SETI is such a misguided (in a sweet way)
effort.

Here we are, searching for extraterrestrial intelligence while we can't even
communicate with the other intelligent species on our own planet.

Glad to see we're making progress though!

~~~
bitwize
SETI is not misguided. We've known for a long time that Earth was hospitable
to intelligent life (us). That there are other species with similar levels of
intelligent just makes Earth more awesome.

But it would be a complete _mindfuck_ if we found other intelligent life in
space, where before there were mainly only stars, rocks, and interesting
formations of liquid and gas somewhere in between. It would change everything.

~~~
seldo
The thing about SETI is that it is not really a search for intelligent life,
it's a search for "intelligent life that broadcasts radio waves of a frequency
and power that we can detect in a pattern and on a timescale similar enough to
our own communications that we can recognize it".

Fermi's paradox basically boils down to: if intelligent life is at all common,
it should be everywhere we look, and yet we don't see any. The traditional
position is that therefore if we don't see intelligent life, it must be
because it's too rare, or communication across interstellar distances is
impossible. But the other possible answer is that intelligent life is
everywhere, and we just don't understand or even recognize it as such.

The fact that we've been living with dolphins for millions of years and
actively studying them for decades and have only just worked out a pretty
basic fact -- they have names for each other -- despite the fact that they
share most of their genes with us and live under the same environmental
conditions exactly, suggests that we are probably _really really bad_ at
recognizing intelligent life that isn't exactly like our own.

~~~
enraged_camel
It is also possible that we haven't found intelligent life yet because we
define both intelligence and life in very specific ways that we as humans can
relate to. For example, there can be an intelligent microorganism species out
there where each individual microorganism leads a life as complex as a human.
They may have invented all sorts of things in the micro scale, but chances are
we might never find them simply because we are not looking for intelligent
life in such a micro context.

------
crucialfelix
I went through a Cetacean and cephalopods obsession last year.

What really freaks me out is what Dolphins looked like when they were still
land animals:

<http://understanddolphins.tripod.com/dolphinevolution.html>

Also the perceptual systems of octopus and squid are amazing. Cuttlefish can
perceive the polarization of light. This helps for contrast and edge
detection. Many Cephalopods (octopuses, squid, cuttlefish) can see with their
arms and then replay the image on the other side like a video screen.

Dolphins can tell the difference between a quarter and a dime from 100m away
using sonar. The click generating system emanates from the top of their head,
in the area of the third chakra.

We have a very limited sense of space and an all too focused sense of self.
But we have a lot of oil and we can dig shit up and drive around real fast and
think we are really important.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
> We have a very limited sense of space and an all too focused sense of self.
> But we have a lot of oil and we can dig shit up and drive around real fast
> and think we are really important.

We can also appreciate these things as no other species on Earth can, to the
best of our knowledge.

------
wfn
I referred to this NGM article in another sub-parent comment here, but I think
it contains very relevant on-topic animal intelligence language-related
insights, so posting a link and a couple of short excerpts from it here:

    
    
      Under Pepperberg’s patient tutelage, Alex [a parrot] learned how to use his vocal tract to imitate almost one hundred English words, including the sounds for all of these foods, although he calls an apple a “banerry.”
    
      “Apples taste a little bit like bananas to him, and they look a little bit like cherries, so Alex made up that word for them,” Pepperberg said.
    
      [...]
    
      [...] because Alex was able to produce a close approximation of the sounds of some English words, Pepperberg could ask him questions about a bird’s basic understanding of the world. She couldn’t ask him what he was thinking about, but she could ask him about his knowledge of numbers, shapes, and colors. To demonstrate, Pepperberg carried Alex on her arm to a tall wooden perch in the middle of the room. She then retrieved a green key and a small green cup from a basket on a shelf. She held up the two items to Alex’s eye.
    
      “What’s same?” she asked.
    
      Without hesitation, Alex’s beak opened: “Co-lor.”
    
      “What’s different?” Pepperberg asked.
    
      “Shape,” Alex said.
    

Article: [http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal-
minds...](http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal-
minds/virginia-morell-text)

~~~
the_gipsy
From that excerpt, all the parrot can tell is if two objects are the same
color or not.

~~~
wfn
Not really: the parrot must have an internal representation of 'color' as
something (a concept / quality) that can be _had_ and _shared_ between things.
It (hm, s/he) must therefore understand that it is (it must represent it as)
an abstract quality in the sense that it can be had by different things
(likewise with 'shape').

Well so what? This entails (I would argue) that it has the capacity to store
and operate on abstract things (more or less the definition of 'symbol') - and
in this very sense, the parrot has the faculty for symbolic
processing/operations. Not only does it extract properties from sensory data
and generalize them into concepts (things can be wibbly-wobbly-in-way-A, or
wibbly-wobbly-in-way-B (first order of abstraction (well, n+1 really)) =>
things have wibbliness, and some things have the same kind of wibbliness
(second order (or n+2))), but also, it may operate on these concepts and use
them in assertion/negation propositions: some objects have the same color but
not the same shape. (I use the term proposition in the more general logical
sense, not necessarily as in 'a linguistic assertion'; but when asked, the
parrot provides an answer that can be put in a truth-table so to speak.)

Interestingly, that's one of the ways to actually define 'semantic content':
something which provides truth-conditions (e.g. some language-formalizing
systems would say that the proposition "The present King of France is bald"
has no semantic content / has no meaning because it is neither true nor false
(presently there is no King in France, and the reference fails) (though
Russell would disagree ('how can it be neither true nor false?') (if
interested: "On Denoting", 1905.))

So what #2? Well, one could argue that symbolic apparatus + semantics (a set
of truth-functions / grounds for constructing them) => 'language', so it's
kind of a big thing, I'd say. (At the very least, evidence towards abstract
thought in animals is always somehow very interesting for me.) Again: symbols
(abstracting from properties => projecting these abstracts back onto sensory
data) + symbolic processing (basically, ability to ascribe truth/falsity
to/via them) => darn interesting. There's a whole hot debate how/whether this
can be achieved 'bottom-up' from neural networks (Connectionism) (is 'symbolic
processing' the proper way of reduction? Even if cognition is 'symbolic' in
the end, perhaps it is best to model this starting bottom-up and arriving at
'symb.processing' as an emergent/epiphenomenal capacity?) - or, whether you
need 'innate capacity' for symbolic processing / language ('language genes') -
top-bottom language faculties (that all add up to those same neural networks,
but simply, you won't get much by starting bottom-up) (Classicism / Nativism
(not really interchangeable, using loosely / generalizing, etc.))

(<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/#ConDeb> ,
[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/connectionism/#ShaConBetCo...](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/connectionism/#ShaConBetConCla)
, etc.)

</convoluted comment>

 _edit_ fixed and added even more confusing stuff.

~~~
the_gipsy
Let's go back to the scenario:

> The parrot sees a green key, and a green cup, and answers "color" to "what's
> same?" and "shape" to "what's different".

For all I know, the parrot recognizes both objects having the same color, and
I assume that "shape" means nothing more than "equality" and does _not_ imply
attribution of concept or quality, until the parrot can _also_ tell the
difference between for example something wet and something dry. In my
skepticism, the only meaningful ability of the parrot is to say out loud if
the color matches.

Which, IMHO, does not imply as much as you say. There must definitely be
_some_ internal model of the world for this to happen. You _might_ be right
when you say that there is attribution of quality, concepts, objects, and they
share qualities - but I remain skeptic. For instance, an ant will recognize a
sugar and react to it, and react differently to for ex. something noxious, but
we know that ants are not capable of any complex internal models.

All in all, TY for the reply!

------
pg
Someone should define a canonical way to transform dolphins' whistles into
syllables. Then we could at least sort of refer to them by their names.

~~~
felideon
Apparently, dolphin trainers have the ability to whistle their names:

"Her name was really Cathy. Well, not really. Her real name was
[whistles]."[1]

[1]
[http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_t...](http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_try_to_save_dolphins)

~~~
aendruk
54:33

~~~
StavrosK
Thank you.

~~~
felideon
Maybe it wasn't entirely obvious, but there is a transcript at the bottom.

------
gruseom
John Lilly, who spent years working with dolphins, believed that they were
smart enough to be cute and friendly to humans because they understood how
dangerous we were.

~~~
pvaldes
Not necessarily.

Most of the time the people think about how cute is a dolphin is
misunderstanding the animal. If a Lion shows you the teeth, you don't think is
a cute kitty, is angry!, but, hey, this dolphin that show us the teeth "is
smiling"!. This "smile" is in fact an agressive display in the wild.

Being faster, well armed, and better fitted for water, a dolphin can avoid
dangerous humans in the water any time he wants. In fact a lot of alone
exemplars search for company, actively, even if is from humans, and are
curious. Some dolphins simply like the human company, or the benefits derived
of this, other not... at all.

~~~
mjmahone17
On the other hand, animals that are domesticated become "cuter." Look at the
Russian fox domestication program (and the mirror aggressiveness program).
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox>

These foxes actually share a good number of features with dogs and humans: it
may be that, because dolphins are such social creatures, we perceive them as
cute because they are more or less domesticated.

~~~
icegreentea
A suspected reason why domesticated animals cuter is the ideal that traits
that are typically selected are traits found in youth. The general term for
this is neoteny [1], which is where youthful traits are held on to into adult
life.

Typical traits selected for are reduced aggression and increased docility. The
hypothesis is that the animals that displayed these traits likely also had a
variety of other relatively child-like traits, such as larger heads, larger
foreheads (I guess this might be why dolphins look so darn cute), larger eyes,
floppy ears, and etc - on the basis that the set of genes that control the
development of adult traits are typically linked together.

The result being that as we selected for the tamest animals, we also selected
those that were cuter. It's kind of circular in that traits that make things
cute are typically those that are found as young - the young form of most
animals sharing the same general 'cute' features.

One thing of note is that the concept of neoteny is often invoked to explain
how humans diverged so rapidly from the other primates. If you accept that
explanation, and take the idea a bit further, then you end up with a somewhat
bizarre and perhaps disturbing idea that humans are actually the result of
self-domesticating primates (obviously a gross over simplification... but kind
of a fun thought to play around with).

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny>

~~~
pvaldes
Yes but dolphins are not selectively breeded for domestication. At all. They
are anti-domesticated in fact.

If a killer whale attacks or kills a people in a zoo, (and this accidents
happen) this whale is not killed and is maintained in breeding programs, as
its sons. Too much expensive animal to lose its genes.

------
ricardobeat
“Hey everybody! I’m an adult healthy male named George, and I mean you no
harm!”

That would be more like "Hey everyone, I'm George". Humans also 'encode'
information in that sense - from that introduction you could probably tell
age, general health and friendliness.

The day we can talk to any stranger dolphin and have a real conversation will
be alike to contacting alien life.

~~~
ChrisCooper
Very true. On that topic, "...these communications consist of whistles, not
words." Not to suggest that they're actually speaking a language, but a
language consisting of whistles could still easily contain words. It would
just have a different set of sounds.

~~~
kaybe
It's not like it would be a new concept to humankind:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistle_language>

------
felideon
After some rabbit hole googling related to my 'Seaquarium' digression below, I
encountered this 2010 transcript[1] of an ex-Flipper trainer:

"Flipper was a wild animal that lived in Biscayne Bay before we captured her
and dragged her, kicking and screaming, to the Miami Seaquarium and put her in
a tank and gave her a stage name, Flipper. Her name was really Cathy. Well,
not really. Her real name was [whistles]. Dolphins have a signature whistle
that their mother gives them." - Ric O'Barry

So it seems like this research proves what dolphin trainers have known,
ostensibly, for many years?

[1]
[http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_t...](http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_try_to_save_dolphins)

====== OT:

> The researchers also intensely studied four captive adult male dolphins
> housed at _The Seas Aquarium_ , also in Florida.

Made me giggle. Don't they mean, the [Miami] Seaquarium? If so, Flipper[1][2]
is part of the study!

[1] <http://miamiseaquarium.com/Shows/Flipper-Dolphin>

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipper_(1964_TV_series)#Filmin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipper_\(1964_TV_series\)#Filming_locations)

------
stcredzero
_> Bottlenose dolphins call out the specific names of loved ones when they
become separated, a study finds._

...Holy, f^~kin crap! We've been in the presence of other sentients this whole
time. Enslaved them. Killed them while gathering food. Holy, f^~kin crap!

~~~
noonespecial
Its an uneasy thought to have that sentience might not be a binary function
that humans have and other species lack. It might be a continuum. Some animals
are far more sentient than others. Its followed closely by the even more
uncomfortable thought that this might vary greatly _inside_ the species.
Finally this eerie train of thought pulls into the last station and you think
that if the above is true than its almost certain that some _humans_ are less
sentient than others. There be dragons.

~~~
pyre
Well, you _could_ take that as "less sentient humans should be treated like
animals and abused/treated like property/eaten." On the other hand, you
_could_ take it as:

\- Maybe I shouldn't eat all / some animals.

\- Maybe some / all animals should have more rights and not be treated as
objects, but living beings.

[Not to mention the Christian fundamentalists that will refer to the Bible
stating that God gave man domain over animals, so things like lighting cats on
fire for fun are ok.]

------
mxfh
The full paper is available for free from the Royal Society B:

Vocal copying of individually distinctive signature whistles in bottlenose
dolphins

[http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1757/2013...](http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1757/20130053.full)

The orginal press release is here: <http://www.smru.st-
and.ac.uk/newsItem.aspx?ni=1611>

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-
fife-21...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-
fife-21507301)

------
javajosh
I will wager money that their names translate to things like:

    
    
       Big nose
       Funny tail
       Horny boy
       Big mamma
       Deep swimmer
    

Not just amusing, but also useful. By correlating individual behaviors and
physical features with names, we might be able to unlock dolphin language!
Which would be incredible!

~~~
alan_cx
Great idea. We humans were named after many characteristics. Jobs, what we see
when the child is born, what kinds of personality we want our children to
have, etc.

------
leoh
Last year around this time, I had the opportunity to interact with two
dolphins in captivity. Being with them, they felt so present and warm, like
being around a perceptive old friend. I had never had that experience with an
animal before, except fellow humans. It's something I will never forget.

~~~
dfc
I take it that you are not a dog person?

~~~
leoh
Recently my family got a dog. Love him. But his presence and awareness is very
different.

------
traughber
Growing up, I was lucky enough to occasionally join a group of scientists
aboard a research vessel off the northern tip of the Bahamas. We would spend
hours a day and up to two weeks at a time on the open ocean swimming with them
and making visual and audio recordings of their behavior. The species they
study are Atlantic Spotted Dolphins (Stenella frontalis). One of the things
that has always struck me about them is how social they are – they have social
circles and "cliques", similar to humans. We would observe these social
networks and monitor how they change over the years. This research project is
unique because they've been following this same group of just a few hundred
dolphins in the wild for over 25 years. Having watched video and high
frequency audio recordings of them interacting with one another in the wild,
it comes as no surprise that they have "names" for one another.

Relatedly, Denise Herzing, the founder of that organization (the Wild Dolphin
Project) will be speaking at TED this year (see Session 8, "Coded Meaning"):
<http://conferences.ted.com/TED2013/program/guide.php>

Here's their site: <http://www.wilddolphinproject.org/about-us/mission-
vision/>

------
ChuckMcM
That is an interesting result. Some birds mimic other bird's songs but I don't
know of an example in the bird family where an individual had a unique song.

~~~
tzs
How about Emperor Penguins? When one of a pair returns from feeding, it finds
the other by recognizing its unique calls.

~~~
LargeWu
I think the finding here is not that dolphin A has a unique call, but that
dolphin B calls out to A using A's unique call in order to find A. This is as
opposed to B simply listening for A's call.

------
Viruptc
Unbelievable that humans still kill these amazing animals

<http://www.seashepherd.org/cove-guardians/>

~~~
tsieling
Well, people kill people, too. But I agree with the underlying sentiment that
we should be taking their place in the world much more seriously than we do
most other animals.

------
DanielBMarkham
Because I ended up doing a bit of reading about dolphins earlier this week, I
thought I'd share a bit of trivia in this thread: dolphins also have
prehensile penises. (Like an elephant's nose)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1l9V6Lfe2uE)

And they're also not-very-nice (Tongue firmly in cheek here. Of course animals
do not possess human qualities like "nice" or "asinine")
[http://deepseanews.com/2013/02/10-reasons-why-dolphins-
are-a...](http://deepseanews.com/2013/02/10-reasons-why-dolphins-are-aholes/)

Now that we know they have names and are able to make tools, this has to make
them one of the most unique species on the planet aside from man. Wonder what
would have happened had they just invented some form of writing?

~~~
scotty79
I think we eat them not the other way around only because underwater is a
crappy place to develop multi-generational culture. You need surfaces you can
draw your symbols on and appendages that can manipulate things while looking
at them.

I don't feel that I'm member of the best species on earth. Just the one that
is ahead in the race but only by a very thin margin. Fortunately we reached
"writing" and "science" checkpoints first which means that we effectively won.

------
dchichkov
As far as I know Royal Penguins also can call each other by name. And can
distinguish a call from afar in the noise of hundreds of other penguins
calling each other. There must be a lot of redundancy in the call, I guess.

Also penguins sound totally like one of these old 14400 baud modems ;)

------
ttar
Dolphin language is similar to human language.

[http://www.tusker.com/tusker-trips/eclipse-
trips/archaeo/art...](http://www.tusker.com/tusker-trips/eclipse-
trips/archaeo/art.SetiNews.cfm)

------
maxharris
I think it's a mistake to say that they call each other by "name," because
that implies the ability to form concepts/speak a language, and there is
absolutely zero evidence for that. Even the article is careful to point that
out:

 _While researchers often hesitate to apply the “l word” -- language -- to
non-human communications, bottlenose dolphins and possibly other dolphin
species clearly have a very complex and sophisticated communication system._

~~~
wfn
Depends on your definition of 'name' and your system/formalization of the act
of reference and/or semantics.

In this case, 'name' seems to mean 'proper name', and there are systems
explaining proper names as symbols used to _refer_ , but not to carry semantic
charge (whatever that would entail). For example in my native tongue many town
names are named after rivers large and small that do - or - only used to flow
next to / past those towns. Yet we don't suddenly change the proper name: the
_reference_ still works, but we do not need to cognize the semantic contents
(originally associated with the name, if that was the case anyway; if you know
where Baroomghtown is, I can use the term to refer to it and my reference will
succeed as it were).

That was a mouthful. My (insignificant) point: perhaps they would only need
cognitive machinery for referring to (in some simple(?) sense) /
distinguishing between themselves. That is: (1) usage of proper names does not
(necessarily) imply ability to speak a language (perhaps that's all I meant;
talk about nitpicking..); (2) there's quite a lot of research showing that
animals form concepts left and right (could dig something up, but googling
under those keywords would yield enough). Consider this interesting report:

    
    
      Under Pepperberg’s patient tutelage, Alex [a parrot] learned how to use his vocal tract to imitate almost one hundred English words, including the sounds for all of these foods, although he calls an apple a “banerry.”
    
      “Apples taste a little bit like bananas to him, and they look a little bit like cherries, so Alex made up that word for them,” Pepperberg said.
    

(NGM, 2008: [http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal-
minds...](http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal-
minds/virginia-morell-text) (a curious article))

So it might be possible to conceive of a schema such that [arbitrary symbols
(sequences of syllables, etc.)] + [concepts] => proper names; and those would
indeed be what we are used to calling 'proper names', a subset of the category
denoted by 'names', not something else.

However, I agree completely with the sentiments re: fears of
(over-)anthropomorphizing and projecting our own 'theories of mind' onto other
life.

------
rwhitman
I bet there would be economic opportunity in developing commercial dolphin-
human communication software and interfaces. Imagine how much benefit to deep
sea construction and exploration there would be if training and employing
dolphins using natural language was possible. Or to shipping, fishing etc.

~~~
WiseWeasel
Dolphin-based sitcoms where the dolphin says "it's a living" and shrugs his
dolphin shoulders.

~~~
krapp
When we uplift them, we'll have to remember to give them shoulders. And
eyebrows. Good comedy depends on eyebrows.

------
rblion
Did you know that dolphins love to rape each other and some have tried to rape
a human?!

Check out this list of interesting facts...

[http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-6-badass-facts-
you...](http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-6-badass-facts-you-never-
knew-about-dolphins)

~~~
westicle
It's amazing how similar they are to humans in many respects.

~~~
rblion
It is. Highly intelligent, playful, social, strategic, sexual, and with bursts
of aggression.

------
lignuist
I wonder, if there is any public repository of dolphin audio recordings.

------
mtgx
Have they tried testing this on dogs, too? I assume they don't do that, but it
would be interesting if they did the test on dogs, too.

~~~
ricardobeat
And ferrets.

------
olejolej
Like in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams :) Dolphins
will govern...

------
tomasien
Did anyone else's pulse race when they saw the phrase "encodes other
information"?

