"Hey Flipper, where are you headed?" More or less this is what dolphins say through their whistles. Famous for their intelligence, these mammals have another particular ability, they know how to call themselves by name. This was discovered by a team of marine biologists from the University of St Andrews
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
"Hey Flipper, where are you headed?" More or less they say this i Dolphins through their whistles. Famous for their intelligence, such mammals have another particular ability, they know call each other by name. This was discovered by a team of marine biologists from the University of St Andrews.
According to the researchers, dolphins emit a sound, a kind of whistle perceived by their peers and recognized as a name. Previous studies by the team, led by Stephanie King and Dr Vincent Janik, had shown that dolphins often chear the whistles of their close relatives and friends. And these, for about 50%, have the task of transmitting their identity to friends and relatives.
Through the new research, the biologists attempted to understand whether the animals the whistles were intended for reacted to such calls. For this they have discreetly followed several groups of dolphins recording the whistles, that is their 'signature'. They then saved those recordings on a computer, along with those of other groups of dolphins belonging to a different population.
And the result was amazing. Indeed, every dolphin has only reacted when he heard the computer version of his own whistle, but not that of the whistles of others, thus demonstrating that they know how to recognize the call of their friends. The whistles essentially work just like the names.
“Using new sounds or learning to label things is a rare occurrence in the animal kingdom. However, it is omnipresent in human society and underlies the human languageKing explained, according to which, the data demonstrate the ability to invent new sounds and copy them from the dolphins.
"Our results represent the first case of the use of names in mammals, providing a clear parallel between the dolphin and human communication," he added. Janik.
The study was published in Pnas.
Francesca Mancuso
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