
Dolphins have been observed chattering while cooperating to solve a puzzle - Osiris30
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2084557-dolphins-have-a-language-that-helps-them-solve-problems-together/
======
david-given
I don't see any indication that the chatter contains information related to
solving the puzzle rather than, say, simply expressing their emotional state.
There are plenty of animals which mutter to themselves while thinking ---
humans included!

The obvious experiment here is to have two groups of dolphins positioned so
that they can hear each other but not see each other; give one the puzzle, and
then, later, give the other the same puzzle. If the second group solves it
consistently faster than the first one then probably information is being
transferred. (Although it could just be that the second group is more
motivated after hearing the first group get excited about something.)

Actually arranging an ethical but meaningful experiment with bottlenose
dolphins, which are quite big and are highly opinionated, is left as an
exercise for the reader...

~~~
hcrisp
The evidence that they are using a complex "language" is definitely weak. For
example, how does it prove that they aren't simply saying, "Hey, hey!" to each
other like the Far Side cartoon[0]? I would have preferred more interpretation
of the different noises the dolphins make over the fact that they are making
them in the first place.

[0] [https://pupster.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/dog-
translator.j...](https://pupster.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/dog-
translator.jpg)

~~~
monocasa
They same way we are almost certain that the Voynich manuscript contains an
undeciphered written language, by applying a combination of information
theory, computational linguistics, and statistics.

~~~
KingMob
It's probably more informative than "Hey! Hey!", but it's not clear that it
rises to the level of language, as opposed to communication.

To be precise: not all communication is language, language involves grammar,
which hasn't (yet) been conclusively demonstrated in any other species.

Source: was a neuroscientist who TAed for a guy who tried to teach a chimp
language in the 70's.

------
xchip
TL;DR:

    
    
      - They gave a puzzle to 24 couples of dolphins.
      - In order to solve it they had to cooperate.
      - Out of those 24 dolphins only 1 couple made it.
      - This couple was making more noises than the rest.
    

Conclusion: Dolphins were brainstorming on how to solve the puzzle.

My impression: WTF new scientist, WTF...

~~~
jobigoud
> \- They gave a puzzle to 24 couples of dolphins.

> \- Out of those 24 dolphins only 1 couple made it.

No, they gave the puzzle 24 times to 6 pairs of dolphins. One pair got it each
time, although 4 times a single dolphin from the pair managed to get it own
its own.

I would really like to read the paper. Did they get better in time? Did the
one dolphin figured it out on its own before or after he figured it out with
his pal? Why was he even able to pull it off on its own anyway?

~~~
xchip
LOL It's not even that :) I reread it again and it is so confusing! It looks
like they repeated the puzzle 24 times in a swimming pool with 6 dolphins,
only 2 dolphins ever managed to solve it once

"The team conducted 24 canister trials, during which all six dolphins were
present. Only two of the dolphins ever managed to crack the puzzle and get to
the food."

~~~
coldcode
Clearly this was a pod of dolphin managers.

------
awinter-py
I think we'd learn more about dolphin communication by generating tasks that
require a human and dolphin to collaborate in the water; the task should be
novel for both subjects.

As things are we seldom let the dolphin 'lead' the task; but these animals are
highly adapted to the water. With a human-dolphin pair, the dolphin would be
in the position of using its superior knowledge of the environment (sonar) to
direct the human's superior ability to manipulate objects (hands). For
example, how would a human-dolphin pair collaborate in a pitch-black cave?

Dogs are very good at manipulating human behavior; the party line is that
wolves have better problem solving in general but dogs are better when there's
a human in the room. Dolphins don't have the benefit of coevolution that dogs
do, but they're smart and social; I bet they could figure us out.

------
cygnus_a
They say it's conclusive evidence of useful communication. I say it's just
compelling evidence.

Still cool and exciting though!

------
agumonkey
I remember seeing a video about chimpanzees collaborating to untie ropes. What
surprised me wasn't the team problem solving, it's the speed and
impliciteness. Each just poked at one side of the problem, got stuck, the got
closer, somehow agreed on something then synchronized their actions so the
rope would open the food gate.

~~~
rvense
Interesting. Some, including the developmental psychologist Michael
Tomasello[0], who's written extensively on first language acquisition, would
say that the ability to share attention is central to human language.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Tomasello](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Tomasello)

~~~
agumonkey
Very interesting name. Have been trying to find similar research. Thanks a
lot.

------
mitchtbaum
When those human skin bags give us these puzzles, they seem to make
unintelligible noises, albeit slowly.. Perhaps we can figure out how to talk
to them if we can stop doing simple puzzles only to show that we have working
minds and languages. /dolphin (to other dolphin)

------
kagamine
I wonder how dolphins and other animals would react to a VR headset and
virtual hands? With an interface tailored to actions we could gauge their
language capabilities without the need to understand the sounds. I wonder what
dolphin VR CoD would look like.

------
newobj
I don't know anything about animal (verbal) language. But I'm curious if there
are any animals whose apparent language is advanced enough that zoologists may
believe that the animals have a conceptual language similar to ours.

If so, I wonder if ML algorithms have ever been applied to decode the
languages? I suppose collecting the data may be hard, but it feels like ML may
better suited to predict/decode the language than qualitative observations by
humans? e.g. what if communication happened more via power than frequency?

~~~
trhway
Google the prairie dogs language observations.

~~~
KingMob
Unfortunately, Dr. Slobodchikoff, while indeed having a PhD, is not actually a
linguist, and most of his papers are in other fields. Here's a pretty good
assessment of his prairie dog claims:
[https://badlinguistics.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/hold-the-
fro...](https://badlinguistics.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/hold-the-front-page-
prairie-dogs-still-dont-h/)

------
deegles
I wonder if this could be used to decode dolphin language. Have the dolphins
separate and make the puzzle require communicating about images on a screen or
something. The other dolphin would have to push the correct button to get the
prize. Recording all of these interactions could be used for machine
translation maybe.

------
takno
"Scientific American wants permission to send you notifications". Came on a
bit strong there guys, at least let me browse a couple of pages and tell me
what the notifications might be...

------
Aelinsaar
It's suggestive, given what we already suspect about dolphins, but it's
"EVIDENCE" of precisely bupkis.

------
charlesdenault
“We find animals doing things that we, in our arrogance, used to think was
'just human'.” - Jane Goodall

------
coroutines
Maybe they're deciding how many humans they should spare in the upcoming war.

I imagine the puzzles garner little sympathy.

