Five dolphins lived in a certain aquarium in France. Every day, they put on shows for people - jumping around, that kind of thing. One day the aquarium started playing a 20-minute clip of "intro music" for the show. This consisted of various oceanic sounds including sea birds, dolphin noises and some whale-song.
What happened next was amazing. About a month about they brought in the intro sounds, the researchers noticed some odd sounds coming from the dolphins, late at night. It turned out that the dolphins had started making whale noises.
They only did this at night, mostly between 1 am and 3 am, when they were resting, possibly even sleeping. No-one trained them to do this. The "atypical vocalizations" were much lower than the dolphin's normal whistles, and also lasted longer.
Unfortunately, it wasn't possible to tell how many of the dolphins did this.
The authors recorded the dolphin's whale impressions with an underwater microphone, and played them back to a sample of 20 biologists, who weren't told the hypothesis of the study. Many of them thought they were whale-song, especially when the clips were slowed down to half-speed, dolphin's voices being "higher" than whales'.
Why the dolphins did this is a mystery. All of them had been born in captivity, so they'd never encountered a real whale. One theory is that they were mentally rehearsing the events of the day to come. Maybe they were even dreaming about them and "talking in their sleep" - although this is unclear, because it's not known whether dolphins dream; don't exactly sleep in the same way we do.
The paper's open access and it even comes with some audio clips of the dolphins, although unless you're familiar with what they sound like normally these aren't very meaningful.
Kremers D, Jaramillo MB, Böye M, Lemasson A, & Hausberger M (2011). Do dolphins rehearse show-stimuli when at rest? Delayed matching of auditory memory. Frontiers in Psychology, 2 PMID: 22232611
16 comments:
Soo cute! :) I love dolphins! This post made my week. Thanks!
Very cool! Maybe the dolphins are trying to tell their keepers something about their language and cognitive abilities.
May be the dolphins have nightmares of sort and do not like their working and prison conditions.
Not to say that it is not interesting for science.
Like Free Willy? Wailing for freedom. Like when slaves used to hum for freedom. Ok that came out wrong. I absolutely believe animals can dream. I watch my puppies sleep and their legs twitch at times like they're running in their dream. I wonder what would happen if they were introduced to a real whale.
They are so cute!
It's fun to play with the dolphins because they are smart.
I had a listen to the audio clips. Sounds like a baby cooing and burping.
omg,
Nightmares happen to be unpleasant dreams often related to stressful experiences.
But it was just a passing thought from somebody who was not able to do animal studies but recognize tha tthey are important.
Also, I did it for my children's pleasure but I never liked whale watching when to see dolphins in the sea always was pure joy to me.
I used to call my ex-bf "Dolphi" not only did he smile all the time, that beautiful dolphin smile.. he'd squeal like a dolphin during yeah. Since I grew up on the beach and still live near the beach, there were times when dolphins would visit us on the surf. Pretty magical swimming with them, they like to nudge! And CLICK!! They're not one of those stand offish creatures, they show off, kiss you!! also extremely playful! Love dolphins.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rynvewVe21Y
Cat and dolphin kissing! :)
http://youtu.be/YBYU1eayaXs
Dolphins see themselves in the mirror!
"Many of them thought they were whale-song, especially when the clips were slowed down to half-speed, dolphin's voices being "higher" than whales'."
Hmm. Could bias have been introduced by messing around with the noises the dolphins actually made?
Good point, but they also slowed down the normal dolphin whistles by the same amount; those were still rated as dolphin-y not whaley.
Dolphins ARE whales, therefore all dolphin noices are whale noices. Just wanted to clarify that.
Andreas,
If you are right it makes one think very badly of the Journal Frontier sciences in comparative psychology since we know neuroskeptic work ethics and quality even with the paywall limiting me to the abstract.
That kind of carelessness worries me.
What worries me really-tinking more about it - is that Pr Thomas Bergeron - a well-known genetician studying autism and claiming in meeting that he does research because he likes surprises- is presenting as a sure way to make hudge progresses the fact that a whale cry specialist was studying mouses cries in his lab.
NB: Dolphin might be whales but if I were not a vegetarian I could eat a hudge whale steak to please a Japonese or Icelandic Colleague when I was feeling funny in my stomach in a SAm's the fisherman restaurant on the american East coast where they offered Dolphin on the menu (it was a fish called like that and in France they would have found a pseudo for the menu; like they do to make tourists eat parts of animals they would never comtemplate eating with full knowledge of what it is)
Oh so humpback whales click and kiss ? Whales and dolphins may share similar genes but so do humans and chimps. I certainly don't scratch my bottom that often.. I just don't know anymore for men though.. I"m sitting on the train right now and oh gosh shave? Stop grunting ? It's the weird sounds they make which sort of convinces me of planet of the apes.
It's a very interesting post. It's very cute to think that dolphins are that smart. I always go dolphins argyll and I always enjoy it. They're real nice.
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