
Breaking the communication barrier between dolphins and humans - sergeant3
http://on.natgeo.com/1DPJAkw#
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snowwrestler
Imagine that you're a football (aka soccer) player. And of course all your
teammates are football players too.

To communicate explicitly on the football pitch, you use a combination of
names, pronouns, short phrases, hand gestures, head movements, etc. But
actually most of the communication on the pitch is implicit--players observing
each other, inferring the mental state of each other, and making changes based
on those inferences. That's how players running at full speed are able to
improvise complex plays involving long passes.

This is how I think of the communication between smart social animals like
wolves or dolphins. They are like a football team. Every individual is an
athlete, with essentially similar physical characteristics and skills. And
they interact to accomplish essentially athletic goals, like hunting, or
asserting dominance, or mating.

So, I'm not holding out hope that dolphins have a secret rich language, or
even an interest in developing one. Heck, even among humans, professional
athletes do not have a strong reputation as deep thinkers. But they think a
lot about their particular sport.

The movie _Avatar_ , while terrible overall, got this right, I think.
Scientists failed utterly to make a connection with the big blue natives. It
wasn't until a warrior (by accident) took on the task that the connection was
made. The big blue natives were themselves warriors, so of course that is the
type of communication they valued most.

Edit just for fun:

[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqrzuj_the-life-aquatic-
wit...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqrzuj_the-life-aquatic-with-steve-
zissou-clip-i-am-sick-of-these-dolphins_shortfilms)

~~~
burnt_chrome
The other side of the coin is that there really might not be any actual
pattern to pull out of any single dolphin's vocalizations.

Just because dolphins possess a possible capacity for language doesn't mean
that any language exists.

I'd figure the mutlitude of dolphins in the wild all establish personal
colloquial parlances, organized according to the whims an experiences of each
individual pod.

Kind of like in that movie Nell, where the children grew up learning to make
noises like their stroke-afflicted mother. If there are no regimented social
constraints to enforce teaching and learning, wild animals have no
externalized motive for establishing the codified norms of a symbolic
language.

~~~
snowwrestler
I agree with this idea. Wordless shouts can get a lot of communication done on
a football pitch when accompanied with some gesturing and a rich understanding
of the immediate context.

Even among humans, with our highly codified and atomic language, there is a
lot of research that hints at how important nonverbal cues are to
communication.

Dolphins can seemingly identify themselves verbally, but does that mean it's
part of language? It doesn't seem to be conceptually different the fact that
big cats and dogs identify themselves to each other, although they do it with
complex chemical markers instead of sound waves. But I don't think anyone
expects to find a highly codified chemical language of "words" among cats.

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foz
There was a great RadioLab episode [1] that followed Denise Herzing during one
of her tests. Also in the same episode they discussed the controversial co-
habitation communication research done by Margaret Howe in the 1960s. A really
fascinating episode for anyone interested in this topic.

1\.
[http://www.radiolab.org/story/hello/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/hello/)

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dolphinsce
Personally, My main motivation for learning about artificial intelligence has
been to break thE barrier of being able to communicate with dolphins . At this
point I only understand the principles of machine learning and pattern
recognition and this challenge should be overcome soon . I think there could
be more advances in communications with other creatures.

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graycat
Not completely in jest, it sounds like maybe the dolphins thought that,
clearly, those humans were idiots, not worth trying to teach or respond to!

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late2part
Dolphins are marvelous creatures. I don't quite think they rise to the
sentience of human, but it's hard to imagine them as 'dumb animals.'

~~~
thesteamboat
To be fair, much of the time people don't quite rise to the sentience of
humans.

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SixSigma
"Come on Eric, you've had your lunch"

[https://www.youtu.be/qf_BR1StMxQ](https://www.youtu.be/qf_BR1StMxQ)

Sorry

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vezycash
Chrome wouldn't open your link. I've corrected it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf_BR1StMxQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf_BR1StMxQ)

~~~
hobarrera
Nor does firefox. Looks like the TLS certificate for the domain is the wrong
one.

