While I'd definitely say that they seem to be overstating their results, what they don't seem to be saying is that the dolphins produce direct mimicry of the sounds they perceive. That would probably not further their thesis of language, and would indeed probably be rather detectable (though it probably wouldn't result in the same sound twice on microphone, both because echolocation is highly dependent on the dolphin's frame of reference, and because some deal of fidelity would likely be lost in the process, but we don't quite know from where)<div>
<br></div><div>Anyway, I think that what they're working off of here is the speed with which the dolphins associated the playbacks to the real objects when the system was unfamiliar to them. Animals can be trained to identify objects from videos of the object, but simply showing an animal with no experience with video a video seems unlikely to result in identification of the object. So, either dolphins have some innate sense of sonic-visual language, or dolphins are exceptionally good at figuring out games when promised rewards... The latter is true, but they don't seem to be distracted by that. A better test that seems more in line with other standards for studying animal communication might be to playback the generated data to one dolphin, then determine if that dolphin can direct a second dolphin to choose the correct object without seeing it.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Anyway, if dolphins do have such language, there is no particular reason it should be easily distinguishable for us. We don't even really know what features they would prioritize in communicating such information, let alone how it would be encoded into the sounds available to them. Would communicating the difference in resonance/scattering from rubber to steel be of importance? How much shape detail is necessary? A couple concave/convex regions? edges? all the detail they can perceive in a long series of echolocative bursts? Is perspective of the original image preserved in repetition? Is overall distance? The possibility that perspective is not maintained between representations of the same object alone account for millions of ways to "describe" a given object in such a language, so a complete inability to detect any sort of language-like order would be very much understandable.</div>
<div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 11:40 PM, Mitch Altman <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:maltman23@hotmail.com">maltman23@hotmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div><div dir="ltr">
If Dolphins can communicate shapes that they haven't actually experienced, but are shapes from their imagination, that implies that they are capable of either design, or art, or both. That's way cool.<br> <br>Mitch.<br>
<br> <br>------------------------<br> <br><div><div></div>> Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 23:23:48 -0500<br>> From: <a href="mailto:mrericboyd@yahoo.com" target="_blank">mrericboyd@yahoo.com</a><br>> To: <a href="mailto:cyborg@lists.noisebridge.net" target="_blank">cyborg@lists.noisebridge.net</a><br>
> Subject: [Cyborg] dolphin language<div><div class="h5"><br>> <br>> <a href="http://speakdolphin.com/ResearchItems.cfm?ID=20" target="_blank">http://speakdolphin.com/ResearchItems.cfm?ID=20</a><br>> <br>> I'm having a little difficulty understanding the article, but my gist is <br>
> this:<br>> <br>> Dolphins have a visual language, where they "talk shapes" with each <br>> other, by manually reproducing the sounds that they would hear if they <br>> did their ecolocation against an object. So basically, not only can <br>
> they make the outgoing ultra-sonic click-train, they can *also* make the <br>> incoming echo sounds, and thus "repeat" what they "heard" to each <br>> other. The article even speculates that they can generate the sounds <br>
> for objects they haven't actually encountered, but only imagined - if <br>> so, you can imagine that would be super powerful!<br>> <br>> Translating such a powerful visual language into English is left as an <br>
> exercise for the reader :-)<br>> <br>> The scientists claim to use a CymaScope, anyone seen one of these things?<br>> <br>> <a href="http://www.cymascope.com/cymascope.html" target="_blank">http://www.cymascope.com/cymascope.html</a><br>
> <br>> I'm super intrigued by these results, but I have to say, the article <br>> doesn't seem to actually say it the way I said it. The results all talk <br>> about just replying the reflected sounds from real objects, and having <br>
> the dolphins recognize them - this is not surprising, it would be like <br>> us seeing a video of an object, and then later pointing out the object: <br>> not necessary indicative of *language*, merely of perception and <br>
> memory. You could train most any mammal to do it, fairly easily. And <br>> when the article later talks about language, there is a suspicious lack <br>> of experimental details. Do the dolphins actually generate the much <br>
> more complicated reflected sound waves, and not just the outgoing <br>> clicks? That would be simple to verify. But if they do generate such <br>> complicated sounds, you'd think this would have been discovered and <br>
> understood long ago, since it would seem really obvious if dolphins <br>> repeated sounds they just heard back to other members of their tribe... <br>> you'd literally hear the same thing twice on a microphone, but only once <br>
> preceded by the click train.<br>> <br>> Or maybe that's one of those things that is only obvious in hind-site?<br>> <br>> Anyway, fascinating, and I still want to build my ultra-sonic <br>> audification echo-location rig :-)<br>
> <br>> Eric<br>> <br>> _______________________________________________<br>> Cyborg mailing list<br>> <a href="mailto:Cyborg@lists.noisebridge.net" target="_blank">Cyborg@lists.noisebridge.net</a><br>> <a href="https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/cyborg" target="_blank">https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/cyborg</a><br>
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