An analysis of the acoustic signals of bottlenose dolphins showed that they may have developed spoken language

Researchers from the Karadag Nature Reserve recorded a “conversation” between two dolphins using their underwater microphone. After that, the recorded audio signals were carefully analyzed. A system for analyzing the acoustic signals of dolphins was also developed, which makes it possible to distinguish the voices of various individuals.

The fact that dolphins communicate among themselves is no secret. But what the conversation itself was, it was not possible to find out. True, experts understood that dolphins use various types of clicks and “whistles” in order to show their joy, boredom or loneliness. Now it turned out that there are separate words in the “speech” of dolphins, and the “speech” itself, presumably, is much more complicated than previously thought.

By changing the volume and frequency of clicks, dolphinsmake up words , and from words - whole sentences. In many ways, these conversations are similar to human speech. Researchers worked with two bottlenose dolphins nicknamed Yasha and Yana. Their communication was constantly recorded, after which scientists tried to lay out the entire conversation into its constituent elements. As it turned out, dolphins can listen carefully to each other. When one speaks, the second listens, trying not to interrupt, and vice versa.

Study leader Vyacheslav Ryabov says that sharing information with dolphins resembles a conversation between two people. “Each sound generated by one of the animals is different from the other sound generated by the interlocutor,” he says. The difference is in the spectrum and frequency of the pulsations. However, a number of combinations of sounds are not repeated. "We can assume that each ripple is a separate phoneme or word from the language of dolphins."


Preferred position of Yasha and Yana during the conversation

“Analysis of a series of“ conversations ”recorded during the experiments show that dolphins are listening carefully to each other, without interrupting. This gives us a reason to think that animals understand the “speech” of the interlocutor, and they need to listen to everything before starting to “speak” themselves, ”the scientist continues.

Dolphin brain is no less complicated than human brain. At the same time, dolphins developed much longer than people - their history goes back 25 million years.

Researchers have found that Yasha and Yana can make sentences of five words or more. Unfortunately, the content of speech is not yet understood. Ryabov in this regard says that now is the time to start communicating with dolphins, gradually improving their own communication skills with creatures other than us.

“People need to take the first step to establish relationships with the first intelligent inhabitants of our planet, creating devices that overcome barriers to understanding and using the dolphin language,” he says. Previously, experts found that dolphins use more than a thousand whistling signals. True, it remained unclear whether these mammals could speak directly to each other. That is, not to give simple signals to the whole flock, which many animals can do, but to purposefully communicate with each other using a developed communication system.


A group of recorded sounds generated by the dolphin Yana (lower arrows) and Yasha (arrows pointing up) during one of the conversations The

work of Russian scientists to study the way dolphins communicate is not the first. Many experts have studied dolphins, but so far no one has an understanding of the communications of these mammals. True, in 2007, Australian scientists were able to identify individual sounds as signals. A certain combination of such sounds meant "I am here, where is everything?", "Hurry up", "There is food here."

In addition to sounds, dolphins can also communicate using gestures using their fins.

Interestingly, the more difficult the task facing the dolphin, the more these animals communicate with each other. Perhaps, scientists say, dolphins are discussing a solution to the problem they have encountered. For example, in one of the cases previously observed by specialists from Florida, USA, dolphins began to communicate closely when trying to remove the lid from the canister.

Russian scientists argue that dolphins, like humans, build words from separate phonemes. True, if a person has a narrow spectrum band for communication, then the dolphin's spectral range is much wider (40 times). Therefore, the speech of dolphins is more informative than in humans. For one and the same unit of time, a dolphin can transmit much more information to its interlocutor-dolphin than a person - to a person. Sound volume, click frequency, the presence of whistling acoustic signals, signal frequency - all this matters for the dolphin.

Vyacheslav Ryabov and colleagues say that a thorough analysis of the sounds made by these animals was carried out during the study. During the analysis, scientists studied both the spectrum, the duration of the sound, the number of individual sounds and phonemes, and the structure of a possible dolphin language. Scientists emphasize that their work is theoretical.

However, the set of sounds that bottlenose dolphins exchange with each other have much in common with human speech. This indicates a developed intellect and consciousness among dolphins. Their language is most likely a highly developed speech similar to human. Scientists emphasize the need to create systems that could help study the structure of dolphin language. In addition to bottlenose dolphins, specialists from the Karadagsky Nature Reserve studied the communication of toothed whales (Odontoceti). It turned out that this species of mammals also has a developed communication system using sounds. Perhaps, scientists say, this language is no less complex and developed than dolphins.

The scientific work “The study of acoustic signals and the supposed spoken language of the dolphins” was published in the journal “St. Petersburg Polytechnical University Journal: Physics and Mathematics ”(Scientific and Technical Journal of St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. Physics and Mathematics) (doi: 10.1016 / j.spjpm.2016.08.004).