推 HornyDragon:Cool. And I always love dolphins :) 05/24 15:42
推 fandangos:They are so cute! 05/24 20:42
Dolphins, like humans, recognize names
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Bottlenose dolphins can call each other
by name when they whistle, making them the only animals besides
humans known to recognize such identity information, scientists
reported on Monday.
scientists have long known that dolphins' whistling calls include
repeated information thought to be their names, but a new study
indicates dolphins recognize these names even when voice cues are
removed from the sound.
For example, a dolphin might be expected to recognize its name if
called by its mother, but the new study found most dolphins
recognized names -- their signature whistles -- even when emitted
without inflection or other vocal cues.
More than that, two dolphins may refer to a third by the third
animal's name, said Laela Sayigh, one of three authors of a paper
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"They are known to produce these individually distinctive
signature whistles, like names," Sayigh said in a telephone
interview. She said the researchers wanted to know what
information in the whistles helped dolphins identify each other's
names.
The scientists already knew that dolphins responded to whistles,
but wondered if something in the actual voice of the whistling
dolphin was making the identity clear, or if the name itself was
enough for recognition.
To find out, they studied bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota Bay,
Florida. Instead of playing recordings of actual dolphins making
signature whistles, the researchers synthesized signature whistles
with the caller's voice features removed and played them to
dolphins through an underwater speaker.
In nine out of 14 cases, the dolphin would turn more often toward
the speaker if it heard a whistle that sounded like a close
relative's.
"It's a very interesting finding that encourages further research,
because they are using whistles as referential signals -- that's
what words are," said Sayigh, of the University of North Carolina
Wilmington. "dolphins appear to be using these arbitrary signals
to identify another dolphin."
She stopped short of saying dolphins might have a human-like
language.
"I tend to shy away from using the word 'language' myself, because
it's such a loaded term," Sayigh said. "I still really feel
strongly that there is no evidence for something like our
language. (dolphins) have got the cognitive skills at least to
have referential signals."
Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not
be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/05/09/dolphins.names.reut/index.html
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