Posted on 01/01/2009 12:57:28 AM PST by LibWhacker
Researchers in Great Britain and the United States have imaged the first high definition imprints that dolphin sounds make in water. They consider it a real breakthrough in deciphering dolphin language.
Certain sounds made by dolphins have long been suspected to represent language but the complexity of the sounds has made their analysis difficult. Previous techniques, using the spectrograph, display cetacean (dolphins, whales and porpoises) sounds only as graphs of frequency and amplitude.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Do we really want to know what Flipper was saying to Bud and Sandy?
“So long, and thanks for all the fish”
“I’m not a tuna!”
“So Long, and thanks for all the fish...”
That may not be far from the truth.
I’ve often wondered what would happen if we showed them movies underwater, movies that were specially constructed to convey info to them.
If their trainers name is Bill, show them a picture of Bill and have a speaker say “Bill”
See how they respond.
Show a picture of a fish and have the speaker say “fish”.
I would bet dollars to donuts that we could start breaking the language barrier that way. Dolphins are highly intelligent, extremely inquisitive creatures.
Songs From The Sea: Deciphering Dolphin Language With Picture Words
Because the higher harmonics cannot be imaged, the cetacean words are thus simplified. The principle is similar to the way our ear-brain mechanism recognises the voice of a friend on the phone when only a single word is spoken, even though the bandwidth of the phone is very limited compared with face-to-face speech. The resulting "CymaGlyphs" (the name coined to describe visible sound patterns) could form the basis of a lexicon of cetacean language, each pattern representing a thought. (Credit: Image courtesy of Sonic Age Ltd)
People here should also check out the website from the makers of this new technology. It is interesting.
http://www.cymascope.com/index.html
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