TORONTO -Wen a dolphin encounters another dolphin, what are they talking about? Do they have a real conversation, referring to the rain, the weather, the color of the ocean, or is it simply an exchange of recognition signals and practical information about their immediate environment? These marine mammals praised for their intelligence they have a true language similar to that of humans?
To Dr. Vyacheslav Ryabov, Navy Reserve Karadag (Crimea), the Dolphins have indeed a language that is similar to that of humans, as he explains in a study published in the journal “St. Petersburg Polytechnic University Journal: Physics and Mathematics “.
When a dolphin encounter another dolphin, what are they talking about? Do they have a real conversation, referring to the rain, the weather, the color of the ocean, or is it simply an exchange of recognition signals and practical information about their immediate environment? These marine mammals praised for their intelligence they have a true language similar to that of humans?
To Dr. Vyacheslav Ryabov, Navy Reserve Karadag (Crimea), the Dolphins have indeed a language that is similar to that of humans, as he explains in a studypublished in the journal “St. Petersburg Polytechnic University Journal: Physics and Mathematics “.
They speak without interruption …
They are called Yasha and Yana, a male and a female Tursiops truncatus, two bottlenose dolphins from the Black Sea. For twenty years, they live in captivity in the scientific center of the marine reserve Karadag, Crimea.The team of Dr. Vyachslav Ryabov, marine biologist and animal communication has made recordings of various sounds produced by these marine mammals while they quietly floating in the pool without engaging in a particular activity. The different sounds, mostly inaudible to the human ear, have been awarded individually to each dolphin, and were scanned for the study.
The first surprising thing is that the two dolphins emit these sounds in turn, without interruption … and there it is humans who could take seed. But above all, says the scientist, “this exchange like a conversation between two people”: “The fundamental difference between information exchange dolphins and a conversation between humans, it is the characteristics of the acoustic signals of their spoken language . “
But for Dr. Ryabov, there is no doubt he is indeed a language, which he believes to have isolated groups of sounds forming words and other matching phrases. The study says:
Ryabov said: “Essentially, this exchange resembles a conversation between two people. Each pulse that is produced by dolphins is different from another by its appearance in the time domain and by the set of spectral components in the frequency domain.
“In this regard, we can assume that each pulse represents a phoneme or a word of the dolphin’s spoken language. The analysis of numerous pulses registered in our experiments showed that the dolphins took turns in producing (sentences) and did not interrupt each other, which gives reason to believe that each dolphin listened to the other’s pulses before producing its own.
“This language exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language. This indicates a high level of intelligence and consciousness in dolphins, and their language can be ostensibly considered a highly developed spoken language, akin to the human language.”
One might think that this is no big news. After all, many animals use sound to communicate, and some, such as primates, have even learned to speak in human company.Are, for example the case of the female gorilla Koko , who learned sign language, or chimpanzees that “speak” to each other in their natural environment. In fact, most animals communicate by emitting sounds that correspond to a given situation (danger prey …). The song of a bird you find so expressive perhaps is just a way to tell his potential rivals “This is my tree!” without this being a language itself.
What a difference between these instinctive signals to share information on the environment and human language? Are there really a difference?
For the zoologist Arik Kershenbaum , “we are still very far from understanding this transition between animal communication and human language, and this is a great mystery today.” Gradual Evolution or real gap, it remains to be demonstrated.
The dolphin is an animal with a form of intelligence and it is possible to establish communication with it does not necessarily mean it has a language like us. That is what that try to demonstrate several years of subject matter experts like Dr. Denise Herzing, who studies Atlantic dolphins in their natural environment and tries to develop a translator that can interpret the language of these marine mammals, a sort of “Rosetta stone” computer that is able to “crack the code” language. In 2014, she explained have managed to learn a new sound designating a seaweed wild dolphins.
The “first intelligent people on the planet”?
Putting our technology for “decoding” of the language of dolphins, this is what Vyacheslav Ryabov suggests in his study. He assures :
“Humans must take the first step to establish relationships with the first intelligent inhabitants of planet Earth by creating devices that can overcome the barriers that oppose the communication between dolphins and humans.”
It should be noted that the first dolphins appeared here about 5 million years ago, when the first specimens of the genus Homo date only less than 3 million years, which is the comment of Dr. Ryabov …
If the Dolphins do have a language that we can translate or communicate with them in real time, this could pose ethical problems as much as scientists: how to assess the status of beings, to share technology development, could be our equals? And how to judge the actions of man towards them? Questions that will have to find answers quickly if ongoing work is successful.
