Listen to this PodcastMore 60-Second Science
-
The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
Read More »
When we think about how to represent sound visually, most of us probably picture those volume-dependent sine waves. But that’s not how John Stuart Reid pictures sound. He’s patented something called a CymaScope. And he’s using it to help us learn more about how animals like dolphins communicate.
The CymaScope contains a thin film of water—basically a membrane. Sound—even at frequencies humans can’t hear—is directed at the water. The water vibrates in response, and a camera records the vibration. The end result is a spherical image of sound patterns.
Reid is working with Jack Kassewitz, a dolphin researcher in Florida. Kassewitz has recordings of dolphins in specific situations—for instance, what he knows to be distress calls from a variety of individual animals. Those calls have been imaged by the CymaScope. Kassewitz also plans to have a number of different dolphins echolocate on a ball. He hopes that’ll give us a visual picture of how dolphins recognize a ball.
It might sound far-fetched, but Reid and Kassewitz believe these sound images will provide a library of what we might call dolphin words. Which could one day let us communicate with them with their own vocabulary.
—Cynthia Graber
60-Second Science is a daily podcast. Subscribe to this Podcast: RSS | iTunes
See what we're tweeting about
8 Comments
Add CommentAhhhh, at last a pontentially substantive look at sentient communication among other residents on this little blue marble. My own granddaughter says our dogs talk to her (her uncluttered mind translates so much more clearly, I guess). Anyway... ALL creatures consciously communicate with others of their own kind - even bacteria has protein transfer and receptors as a form of communication (quorum sensing).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe point I am making is that sentient and sometimes even abstract concepts are a tool of every species on earth.
As long as we're at it - think about all that light, radiation, gravity and even sound that travels back and forth beyween the stars...
@cautious optimist
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think that you are going to find any Scientists who disagree that organisms "communicate" with each other in some form or another. That seems to be obvious.
The intriguing point of the study, is that these sounds can be mapped into words, the same way that dog barks/whines/howls can be translated to refer to certain situations and behaviours.
The issue with doing any study involving dolphins, however, is that there is so much mythology surrounding them, that anytime any Scientist mentions "dolphin communication" in a study, all the "New Age" guru's come out and apply a "spiritual" angle on it. And suddenly the study becomes "evidence" for the "truth" behind dolphin mythology.
No New Age stuff here - just observations from my own 54 years. Perhaps I have been fed the "Myths" and am surmising more from that than there is - but I doubt it...;-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fact that we can map (read - translate) their "words" is more a testament to human techno-ability. We are finally catching up to the rest of life forms on the planet that understand other species language...
With Dr. John C. Lilly safely dead these past eight years, since when do we let the fancies of the "New Age mafia" determine the scientific agenda?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe metaphysical types have to learn that dolphins are mammals with all that implies including the capacity for lust, rape, cruelty and dominance and stone cold killers.
The scientists have to learn that dolphins are not objects but persons, at least as aware of themselves and their environment as we are, probably more so! They may possess communications modalities about which we currently know nothing. Certainly my own experiences suggest this.
I'm still laughing that they decided to "podcast" an article about dolphin communication!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisZack... that IS funny...:-) Maybe they should play it to dolphins. They'd prob'ly be laughing, too...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've gotta feeling they understand us much better then we them...'-)
Erm... I'll have to look this up again, but I thought it was pretty well established that the "pings" Dolphins send out are not for basic distance measurements but for reflecting off objects, so that the waves return and passes through the walls of their strange donut-shaped organ, creating interference fringes, to provide them with a 3d visual of the area, the same way we project plane waves of light and reassemble the interference fringes when we make holographs. I always wondered what it would be like if you could in one sound, repeat that image to your friend, and he'd see exactly what you saw, as you saw it. Speaking in real 3d scenes instead of linear, coded words. I am anti-new-age, but I've got two family members at Scripps who had talked about it being an understood function when I was studying the QED in middle school. We talked about similarities, and it was pretty interesting to hear of behavioral tests where the dolphins could see the difference between one finger and two fingers behind partitions. While I definitely see the mythology among the eager to believe, I also don't know anyone who has worked in animal behavior who hasn't at some point spoke out reducing the notion that we humans are the sole possessors of consciousness and rational thought to latent ignorance and arrogance, stemming from the more hunter end of our hunter/gatherer recent past. It does seem that each week, some new finding erodes away at our claim to be the sole possessors of intelligence and consciousness on the planet... with what drives most of peoples lives, one can't help but wonder if there will come a time when people realize that their lives are not the only valid ones around. Ok, that's as new-agey as I get.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHotblack,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's not new agey -- it's simple common sense (I may not have much, but I know it when I see it...) & observation.