

Dolphin Speak Relies on Brevity - bbg
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/08/11/dolphin-language.html

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dhbradshaw
This is more of a statement on the universality of the principles of
information theory than a proof that dolphins and humans are alike.

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jpwagner
Totally true.

I prefer they just report the facts of studies rather than have some writer
fluff it up.

I suppose that's the difference between a magazine and a journal.

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LegionSB
Well that settles it: my wife is definitely not part dolphin.

~~~
lundgren
Then WTF was that in your waterbed last night?!?

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joubert
fr dk. b ls l.

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321abc
_"The researchers broke down each of these 30 behaviors into individual units.
A side flip, for example, requires a dolphin to jump and land on its side --
for a total of two behavioral units."_

This sounds so arbitrary. Why is jumping and landing counted as two units? If
a dolphin jumps, it's going to land no matter what. Why not count it as just
one point?

 _"Head butting takes four units, as two individuals jump, hit and use their
heads."_

Why four and not two?

 _"A simple turn involves just one unit, so does a forced blow of air out of a
partially closed blowhole."_

This is the only part that makes sense.

 _"After hundreds of hours of observation and analyses, the scientists
concluded that dolphins perform simple, one-move behaviors more often than
complicated, multi-faceted actions."_

Or it could just be that it takes a lot more energy (and sometimes
cooperation) to perform the actions which they happened to assign higher
number of units to, regardless of their complexity.

 _"Scientists call this phenomenon the "law of brevity," and it exists in all
human languages"_

Or perhaps it has nothing to do with language, but everything to do with
dolphins only being able to perform a limited number of actions that require
lots of energy and cooperation.

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sound2man
Dolphins invented twitter?

