Our sea brothers in mind are talking, discussing the solution to a complex problem
Scientists have long suspected that the sounds that dolphins make are meaningful - they carry information. And by no means primitive, but sometimes very complex and extensive. Now this was convinced by experiments conducted by American researchers from the Dolphins Plus research institute in Florida and the University of Southern Mississippi.
Holli Eskelinen, the head of research, and her colleagues gave the dolphins a test of their wits. A pencil case was made that could be opened by pulling the loop at the end. They hid the fish inside and tied the pencil case to the raft. Then 6 dolphins took turns thinking how to open the pencil case to get to the fish. Two people guessed to pull the loop. And they pulled, having received a fish.
The next series of experiments was complicated - a pencil case with a fish inside was simply thrown into the water. But now the experimenters have placed the hinges at both ends of the pencil case. And to open it, you had to pull two loops at once. Dolphins, among which there was necessarily a "savvy" one, were launched in pairs. They coped with the “two-edged” problem in about 30 seconds. But before that, the dolphins actively whistled - clicked. Although in the previous series - when they worked alone - they were more silent. And only occasionally "expressed".
The dolphin solves the problem on its own. "Colleague" is watching
After analyzing the sounds that were recorded during the joint work of dolphins, the scientists came to the conclusion: the subjects specifically discussed approaches to solving the problem. And they gave each other advice - where and for what to pull. As a result, the pencil case was quickly opened.
Brothers in mind. Not otherwise.
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Dolphins agreed on how to proceed
AT THIS TIME
Don't forget old friends
Recently, Scottish biologists stunned the public with their discovery: it turns out that dolphins call each other by name. Names come up with themselves in the form of a set of high-frequency signals - the so-called whistles.
The phenomenon was continued to be studied by scientists from the University of Chicago. And they discovered that intellectuals of the sea also have a phenomenal memory. They remember their relatives whom they have not seen for many years. They are recognized by their names. Nobody else is capable of this, except for dolphins and people.
The research was led by Dr Jason Bruck. For the experiments, his team selected 53 dolphins that were kept in nurseries - males, females, cubs. Their conversations, including whistles corresponding to their names, were recorded. Brook's colleague kept such records for many years.
Dolphins were not kept in one place. Often they were transferred to other nurseries - some for experiments, some for breeding, so that they could find a suitable pair. As a result, the dolphins, once communicating, were separated. Here is their memory and Brooke checked, establishing where these animals are.
The essence of the experiments: different whistling names were played to dolphins and watched how they would react to them.
Our marine brothers in mind did not pay attention to unknown names. But when they heard whistlers specially inserted by scientists, corresponding to the names of their old acquaintances, they responded. And by their excited behavior they demonstrated that they recognized a relative. They tried to enter into a conversation with him, called themselves, swimming up to the source of signals.
In one experiment, a female bottlenose dolphin recognized her friend 20 years and 6 months after they were separated.
According to Brook, dolphins can remember each other for much longer - perhaps their entire life. Why not? After all, their brains are larger than a human.
Dolphin Talk Recording
BTW
It's full of information
More than a decade ago, American researchers Laurence Doyle of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in Mountain View, along with animal behavior experts from California State University at Davis, recorded several hundred dolphin communication signals. And they applied the so-called Zipf method to them. It was developed back in 1949 by George Kingsley Zipf, a professor at Harvard University.
The method is based on mathematics - a statistical analysis of the frequency of occurrence of words and letters. It allows you to determine how informative, orderly and, therefore, reasonable any, even a completely unfamiliar language. The analysis result is a graph. And if you go to it right away, without going into the wisdom of the method, it turns out that modern human languages, for example, English, Russian and even Japanese, give a straight line with a slope. Some kind of gibberish - no tilt.
So the "dolphin line" is the same as ours. Conclusion: their language carries information.
Other details were also revealed. If you believe the scientists who highly value the intelligence of our sea brothers, then dolphins have at least six levels of organization in the speech: sound, syllable, word, simple phrase, complex phrase, paragraph.
Read another thing "Dolphins found writing"
Vladimir LAGOVSKY