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Snipped from Scotsman.com.
I have had a strong curiosity about dolphins for a very long time. It started after I watched a special on them when I was a kid about how they could tell colors, shapes, sizes and solve problems. They could do all kinds of amazing things that no other comparable animal could do. Then, my curiosity peaked a decade later when I read an article about how the dolphin “language” was more complex than any of the human languages. I started thinking to myself, “what if dolphins were as smart or smarter than us, but they just lack an opposable thumb to show off their ‘intelligence’.”
Here is an article that delves a little deeper into that question. Biologist Dr Liz Hawkins and her colleagues are trying to decipher if the clicks, squeaks and whistles are an actual language. So far, they have determined that not only do they use signatures to define who is who, but it is contextual as well. These scientists are getting closer and closer to deeming this, a language — dolphinese.
Here is a small portion of the article:
SCIENTISTS have finally unravelled the meaning of squeaks and whistles that make up dolphin “speech”.
According to the Australian researchers who have picked up “dolphinese”, the language shows the animals are more similar to humans that previously thought.
The scientists identified almost 200 different whistles that the dolphins make to communicate, and linked some to specific behaviors.
Biologist Dr Liz Hawkins and her colleagues listened to the chatter of wild bottlenose dolphins off the western coast of Australia for three years.
Dr Hawkins, of the whale research centre at Southern Cross University, New South Wales, said: “This communication is highly complex, and it is contextual, so in a sense it could be termed a language.”
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