MUMBAI MIRROR BUREAU
British and US scientists have imaged the first high-definition imprints that dolphin sounds make in water, which they liken to the Rosetta Stone for deciphering dolphin language.
“Our ultimate aim is to speak to dolphins with a basic vocabulary of dolphin sounds and to understand their responses. This is uncharted territory, but it looks very promising,” said researcher Jack Kassewitz, of the Florida-based dolphin communication research project SpeakDolphin.com.
Certain dolphin sounds have long been suspected to represent language, but their complexity has made analyses difficult.
The key to the new technique is the CymaScope – an instrument that reveals detailed structures within sounds, allowing their architecture to be studied pictorially.
The mechanism captures actual sound vibrations imprinted in the water around dolphins,
providing intricate visual details of dolphin sounds for the first time.
“There is strong evidence that dolphins are able to ‘see’ with sound, much like humans use ultrasound to see an unborn child in the mother’s womb. The Cyma-Scope provides our first glimpse into what the dolphins might be ‘seeing’ with their sounds,” said Kassewitz.
The resulting “CymaGlyphs” are reproducible patterns that are expected to form the basis of a lexicon of dolphin language, with each pattern representing a dolphin ‘picture word’.
Study leader John Reid, a British acoustics engineer, said that the technique has similarities to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs.
“Jean-Francois Champollion and Thomas Young used the Rosetta Stone to discover key elements of the primer that allowed the Egyptian language to be deciphered. The CymaGlyphs can be likened to the hieroglyphs of the Rosetta Stone,” he said.
“Now that dolphin chirps, whistles and click-trains can be easily converted into CymaGlyphs, we have an important tool for deciphering their meaning,” he added.
The scientists plan to build a library of dolphin sounds, verifying that the same sound is always repeated for a particular object. They believe this may eventually lead to the ability to communicate with dolphins.
“During my times with dolphins, there have been several occasions when they seemed to be very determined to communicate with me. We are getting closer to making that possible,” Kassewitz said.
British and US scientists have imaged the first high-definition imprints that dolphin sounds make in water, which they liken to the Rosetta Stone for deciphering dolphin language.
“Our ultimate aim is to speak to dolphins with a basic vocabulary of dolphin sounds and to understand their responses. This is uncharted territory, but it looks very promising,” said researcher Jack Kassewitz, of the Florida-based dolphin communication research project SpeakDolphin.com.
Certain dolphin sounds have long been suspected to represent language, but their complexity has made analyses difficult.
The key to the new technique is the CymaScope – an instrument that reveals detailed structures within sounds, allowing their architecture to be studied pictorially.
The mechanism captures actual sound vibrations imprinted in the water around dolphins,
providing intricate visual details of dolphin sounds for the first time.
“There is strong evidence that dolphins are able to ‘see’ with sound, much like humans use ultrasound to see an unborn child in the mother’s womb. The Cyma-Scope provides our first glimpse into what the dolphins might be ‘seeing’ with their sounds,” said Kassewitz.
The resulting “CymaGlyphs” are reproducible patterns that are expected to form the basis of a lexicon of dolphin language, with each pattern representing a dolphin ‘picture word’.
Study leader John Reid, a British acoustics engineer, said that the technique has similarities to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs.
“Jean-Francois Champollion and Thomas Young used the Rosetta Stone to discover key elements of the primer that allowed the Egyptian language to be deciphered. The CymaGlyphs can be likened to the hieroglyphs of the Rosetta Stone,” he said.
“Now that dolphin chirps, whistles and click-trains can be easily converted into CymaGlyphs, we have an important tool for deciphering their meaning,” he added.
The scientists plan to build a library of dolphin sounds, verifying that the same sound is always repeated for a particular object. They believe this may eventually lead to the ability to communicate with dolphins.
“During my times with dolphins, there have been several occasions when they seemed to be very determined to communicate with me. We are getting closer to making that possible,” Kassewitz said.
Researchers have made imprints of the sounds dolphins make in water, which they say could act as the Rosetta Stone in deciphering dolphin language.
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