Do Dolphins Have Conversations?

A study in Russia has shown that dolphins while traveling through the ocean at incredible speeds, fighting with sharks still have the time to have a chat with each other.  Dolphins chat via sonar with other dolphins like having a conversation like people.  Like people they are very polite, like waiting without interrupting while the other is “speaking”.

Dolphins are highly intelligent and conscience of the other dolphins while they converse.  All the design features exhibited in the human spoken language are shown in the pulse language of the dolphin.  Social Media has spread this like wildfire.  Humans feel a connection to the dolphin due in part because of the smiles, its soulful eyes, and intelligent behavior that the dolphin exhibits.

Dolphins like to see themselves in mirrors, on television and to interact with people.  One baby dolphin exhaled his mothers’ milk while watching a researcher smoking a cigarette near the dolphin tank because he saw the smoke come out of the person. They also like to play with their young and like humans they do chastise them when they have done something wrong.

Like some Apes dolphins can learn sign language – if someone signs balance a ball on your snout the trained dolphin will understand this and do the command. Some have also learned to recognize symbols of items – show them a picture of a ball and a question mark and if they don’t see the ball, they will push the lever that says No.  They also know when someone is trying to tease them with a nonsense command and ignore them.

Communication between dolphins come in the form of two types of vocalization – whistles and pulses.  They also use sonar – sound waves and echoes – to locate objects.  The researchers found that they couldn’t understand the communication between the dolphins because the set-up they were using prevented the dolphins from echolocating.

Dolphins have their own distinctive whistles – they use one for themselves and one for the other dolphins when they call them or to talk about them when they are not there.  When they show up to a group, they use their own whistle to let them know that they are there.  They have this distinctive whistle for their whole lives and it never changes.

People have been recording – using hydrophones – millions of hours of dolphin signals over the last 50 years to try to understand what they are saying.  Some researchers don’t believe that the dolphins are being polite in pausing but just avoid making sounds at the same time, so they don’t interfere with one another.  So, do dolphins communicate like humans?  Studies show that the sounds do communicate actions like fighting, mating or disciplining their young, but there is no evidence of actual human type conversations.

We might like to believe that dolphins do converse like humans, but research shows otherwise.