Inquiry Project #1 Script

Question: How could humans and dolphins communicate?

How Do Dolphins Communicate with Each Other?

In order to get to an answer, I first researched about how dolphins communicate among themselves. Dolphins communicate by using many sounds, ‘whistles, clicks, squawks, and squeaks’. They also communicate while using body postures such as jaw clap, bubble blowing, fin caresses, and touch. Also, dolphins communicate with each other by making whistle sounds that humans cannot hear. Research shows that the use of whistling becomes very personalized with dolphins. After recording many whistles of dolphins and comparing the data, it was assumed that each dolphin had individualized whistles and that pods can have a type of language lingo that is different from the next.

What do dolphins talk about?

According to many scientists, most of the time dolphins talk to each other about basic facts such as their age, emotional states, and sometimes asking for help when they’re in danger. This shows that dolphins have conversations very similar to us.

How Humans Communicate…

Humans communicate by speaking languages, body language, facial expression, through technology (social networks) and sometimes music. Comparing how dolphins communicate with how we communicate, it seems very similar, since both species communicate by using language, body postures, and body language.

Do dolphins listen to music?

It has been proved that dolphins like to listen to music but prefer classic and country music, while Jazz and rock music stresses them out. However, this could differ from dolphin to dolphin. An observation that helped identify their preference of music was because of their body language. They came up to the window and their play patterns became more fluid, friendly, and curious about what was going on in the other room after music was played. They rubbed their noses against their windows, walls, and expressed more sensory communication.

Some Scientists…

Believe that if humans every hope to talk to animals, dolphins might represent them all, because of their high intelligence, and sophisticated form of communication amongst themselves. There had been many researches about this topic, but scientists haven’t been able to figure out the dolphin language.

Researches of Human-Dolphin Communication from the Past…

Dolphins began to show humans a lot of mutual curiosity about us, such as mimicking our vocalizations and our postures. Some scientists tried recording the whistles of dolphins and replicate them for use, but they figured that effectively duplicating these sounds to communicate with other dolphins were difficult because dolphins have individualized whistles and different type of language lingo within pods, as mentioned before.

Another research of human-dolphin communication from the past was by a scientist called, ‘Dr. Herzing’. He thought of a new way for humans and dolphins to communicate, which was to teach them new language that includes similar dolphin vocalization. Dr. Herzing developed eight “words” that used dolphin-like vocalizations to refer to elements of their environments such as ‘seaweed’ and ‘box wave ride’. This seemed to be affective, when a dolphin made the unique whistle associated with a type of seaweed. Now, Dr. Herzing is hoping to eventually begin analyzing the sounds made by the dolphins and create a rough inter-species dictionary.

Interactions between humans and dolphins…

Many researches show that dolphins assist with healing, which can be for individuals that have disabilities or have suffered some kind of trauma. It had been proved that along with animals such as cats, dogs, or horses, dolphins can be a good solution for reducing mild to moderate forms of depression in some individuals. Also, there had been many incidents where dolphins saved humans from danger.

Can dolphins talk to other animal species?

After many observations, scientists found out that killer whales could make similar whistles that dolphins make. However, this could be only observed when killer whales and dolphins spent time together in aquariums.

Conclusion…

After many researches, I realized that it is difficult for humans to figure out dolphin ‘languages’, and talk to them using their language, because we can’t mimic dolphin whistles like killer whales using the technology we have now. Since communication doesn’t have to mean just talking languages, I thought there would be other ways we could communicate with dolphins. There’s many communication other than talking just like people communicate using body postures, and facial expressions. Therefore, I thought observing dolphin’s body languages, how they react to things they like and dislike can help us communicate with them. For example, by using music, we could identify some of dolphin’s body language, and at least guess how they feel or what they want to say.

Inquiry Project #1

Question: How could humans and dolphins communicate?

In order to find ways humans and dolphins could communicate; I first researched how dolphins communicate with each other, and what they talk about. I found out that dolphins communicate by using many sounds, ‘whistles, clicks, squawks, and squeaks.’ They also communicate while using body postures, touch, and by making whistle sounds that humans cannot hear. After many researches, scientists had made some assumptions about what dolphins’ conversations are about. Dolphins talk about basic facts such as their age, their emotional states, which are very similar to human conversations.

After researching roughly about how dolphins communicate, I researched about ways humans communicate with each other which are by speaking languages, writing, body language, facial expression, music, and through technology.

After finding facts and assumptions about dolphins and humans, I searched a question, ‘Do dolphins listen to music?’

It has been proved that dolphins like to listen to music but prefer classic and country music, while Jazz and rock music stresses them out. Scientists were able to identify this through an observation when dolphins came up to the window and their play patterns became more fluid, friendly, and curious about what was going on in the other room where music was played. They rubbed their noses against the windows, walls, and expressed more sensory communication. After finding this information, I thought maybe we could identify dolphins’ body language or sounds by having them listen to different styles and types of music and investigating their responses.

I also researched about what kind of ways scientists are using for humans to be able to communicate to dolphins. There were some scientists that believed that if humans ever hope to talk to animals, dolphins might represent all animals because of their high intelligence and their sophisticated form of communication amongst themselves. After noticing that dolphins tried to mimic our vocalization and our postures, some scientists tried recording the whistles of dolphins and replicate them for use. However, they figured out that it was difficult to effectively duplicate these sounds to communicate with the dolphins because they found out that dolphins have individualized whistles and different types of language lingo within pods.

I discovered that recently, a scientist called, ‘Dr. Herzing’ had effective result from an experiment. The experiment was to teach dolphins new created words that used dolphin-like vocalizations. The experiment succeeded after a dolphin made the unique whistle associated with a type of seaweed.

So far, I have found examples of experiments scientists tried out to figure our dolphin languages, find information and relation of how dolphins and humans communicate among themselves.