Latest news with #Sayigh
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Could deciphering dolphin language help us communicate with ET?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. There are creatures here on Earth that may give us clues on getting "chat-time" with extraterrestrial intelligence — dolphins, which are famously social and smart. Recently, the Coller Dolittle Challenge awarded the winner of its first $100,000 annual prize to accelerate progress toward interspecies two-way communication. A prize of equal value will be awarded every year until a team deciphers the secret to interspecies communication. This year's winning team of researchers has discovered that dolphin whistles could function like words — with mutually understood, context-specific meaning. The winning team was led by Laela Sayigh from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The researchers are studying the resident bottlenose dolphin community offshore of Sarasota, Florida. They were on the lookout for "non-signature" whistles, which comprise approximately 50% of the whistles produced by Sarasota dolphins. Non-signature whistles differ from the more widely studied "signature" whistles, which are referential, name-like vocalizations. Sayigh's team used non-invasive suction-cup hydrophones, which they placed on the dolphins during unique catch-and-release health assessments, as well as digital acoustic tags. "Bottlenose dolphins have long fascinated animal communication researchers," Sayigh said in a statement. "Our work shows that these whistles could potentially function like words, shared by multiple dolphins." Sayigh and her team can now use deep learning in an attempt to "crack the code" and analyze those whistles. But what does all this have to do with E.T.? "My interests are very firmly here on Earth, in learning about how dolphins communicate with each other," Sayigh told "I do know that there are others in the animal communication world that are interested in this, however." One of those researchers is Arik Kershenbaum, an associate professor and director of studies at Girton College, part of the University of Cambridge in England. He's the author of "The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens — and Ourselves" (Viking, 2020). Kershenbaum explained that the book is about life on Earth, because "that's all we have to look at." He also contributed a white paper for a workshop at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in California, titled "What Animal Studies Can Tell Us about Detecting Intelligent Messages from Outside Earth." In that paper for the SETI Institute, Kershenbaum and colleagues concluded that animal communication research is the closest we are likely to get to studying extraterrestrial signals, until such signals are actually received. "Many of the challenges facing SETI research are similar to those already addressed in the investigation of animal behavior, and the evolutionary origins of human language," they wrote. "Indeed, the evolution of language on Earth may in fact have been driven and constrained by similar principles to those operating on life on other planets." The researchers have proposed the establishment of a large cross-species database of communicative signals, made available to all SETI and animal behavior researchers. In addition, they also proposed that tools, algorithms and software used to analyze these signals should be made publicly available for application to these data sets, "so that comparative studies can take full advantage of the expertise from the biological, mathematical, linguistic and astronomical communities." The topic of dolphin language interpretation, as well as the vocalizations of humpback whales and the field of non-human communications more broadly, is increasingly drawing the interest of SETI researchers and astrobiologists, explained Bill Diamond, president of the SETI Institute. Humpback whales have very complex vocalizations, Diamond told "where it seems clear that they are transmitting information and not simply making sounds associated with mating, feeding or dealing with threats. They plan ahead and communicate complex instructions to one another." Leading that look is SETI researcher Laurance Doyle, who's working on a project in partnership with the Alaska Whale Foundation to study the vocalizations of humpback whales. Related stories: — Talking to ET? Why math may be the best language — The search for alien life (reference) — Will we ever be able to communicate with aliens? For Diamond, the relevant research question is whether or not there are some fundamental mathematical rules associated with the transmission of information that would be universal — like the laws of physics and chemistry — within our known universe. "If there's an underlying rule structure to the transmission of information, and we can decipher it," Diamond said, "we would firstly be able to recognize a detected SETI signal as containing information, and therefore intelligence. And, possibly, we might even ultimately be able to translate it!" According to Diamond, "there's definitely a connection between SETI/astrobiology and the study of non-human communication and non-human intelligence."
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Do these Florida dolphins have a language? Scientists are finding new clues.
Dolphins are some of the most vocal animals in our oceans. Their pods are a bustling soundscape of clicks, whistles, and buzzy pulses. What to our ears is a creaking door or a melodic pop is to a dolphin a means to echolocate or communicate. They even have names—research has found they use 'signature whistles' to identify themselves, a sort of vocal version of a human's signature. These whistles are produced by one individual and repeated by another—'Jeff, Jeff'—to initiate or re-establish contact. The discovery back in 2013 that dolphins imitate each other's whistles showed that these cetaceans can understand and learn these unique sounds—a complex cognitive feat for non-human animals. Now a talkative bunch of wild bottlenose dolphins have revealed another talent: they appear to be using a broad repertoire of whistles that are not names. So far, researchers have identified 22 of these 'non-signature whistles' used by dozens of the dolphins. 'We have these non-signature whistles that seem potentially like they could function like words of some kind, with specific meanings,' says Laela Sayigh, a marine biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Sayigh and her team were recently awarded the Coller-Dolittle Prize for Two-way Inter-species Communication. Two of the whistles—with the catchy names NSWA and NSWB—seem to have a common function, one an alarm, the other a query, respectively. The findings, recently published as a preprint on bioRxiv, raise the question of whether dolphins may communicate using something akin to a language. 'If this pans out, it's a very, very big discovery in terms of understanding dolphin communication,' says Arik Kershenbaum, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge who was not involved in the research. But it's a big stretch at this point to consider these sounds similar to words, he says. 'Non-signature whistles have been of interest to researchers for ages and ages and no one's really got very far working on that. They're the big advantage of this study.' The idea that dolphins may have a language dates back to the 1960s, though any conclusive evidence has remained elusive. Studying communication among an underwater species is difficult to observe and dolphins don't make any recognizably consistent movements linked to their sounds. Yet for over forty years, scientists in the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program have carried out regular health assessments on a six-generation pod of around 170 wild dolphins that live in the waters around Florida's western coastline. As dolphins surfaced for air, researchers were able to record decades of dolphin vocalizations by briefly placing underwater microphones called hydrophones on their heads, as they swam in temporary net corrals. In 2012, the same research team began using digital acoustic tags fitted with suction cups, that ride on the back of the animals as they swim freely. These captured high-quality sounds and movement underwater. The result of this data is a giant catalogue of dolphin chit chat, based on more than 1,000 recording sessions made over the past 40 years. Around 2017, while digging into some of this data, Sayigh noticed a strange whistle with an unusual flat tone in the middle. She was surprised to notice it was then used by another dolphin. 'I kind of thought I was going a little bonkers,' she says. But her team has now found more than 35 of the dolphins using the same signal. Based on the context in which the dolphins make it, the researchers think this whistle—NSWB—could function as some sort of question. In one instance, the researchers were running an experiment using a hydrophone dipped in the surface of the water. When they played the signature whistles of two closely bonded male dolphins as they swam together—they heard the query in return. 'On the boat we were joking that it was the 'WTF' whistle,' says Sayigh. 'It was kind of like, 'what's going on? We're together, but we're hearing us whistling to each other'.' The second most common non-signature whistle, NSWA, has been used by over 25 individual dolphins and is a punchy combination of up-and-down sweeps. During a series of trials using drones to monitor movement, the whistle seemed to cause most dolphins to avoid the source. 'That doesn't absolutely mean it's an alarm type call, but it seems like a reasonable starting point as a hypothesis,' says Sayigh. Jason Bruck, a biologist at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas who was not involved in the study, says that really nailing down what the whistles mean will be a big challenge that will need good behavioral data. 'If the animal swims away from the whistle, did you offend it somehow? Did you play an alarm whistle? Did you whistle something that was so loud it scared them? You have no idea what's going on inside that animal's head.' The research is still in its infancy. But dolphins are life-long learners, appear to use specific names, and females communicate at higher frequencies with their children—like human 'motherese.' The research team in Sarasota thinks this all suggests a wider repertoire of shared sounds that could reflect a starting point for a 'language-like communication system'. 'If there is a species that we might be able to kind of try to engage with in some kind of two way communication, these guys are really good candidates,' says Sayigh. Whether or not the dolphins' communication is 'language-like' depends on how 'language' is defined, says Sara Torres Ortiz, a biologist at the University of Southern Denmark also not involved in the research. If the criteria is referential signaling— specific sounds referring to specific objects or events—this ability has been seen in other animals, including vervet monkeys and prairie dogs. 'Given these precedents, it would not be surprising if dolphins also possess some form of referential communication,' she says. Other animals may even have communication systems that are more effective than the sounds and cues that humans think of as language, says Bruck, including dolphins who collect information about their friends through urine. 'If we take the animals out of our own heads and we take them for what they are, you find that there's a lot of complexity in what they do as it is.'
National Geographic
22-05-2025
- Science
- National Geographic
Do these Florida dolphins have a language? Scientists are finding new clues.
'If there is a species that we might be able to engage with in some kind of two-way communication, these guys are really good candidates.' Bottlenose dolphins living near Sarasota, Florida have been observed making consistently structured whistles that suggest a common meaning. Photograph By "Photo by Brookfield Zoo Chicago's Sarasota Dolphin Research Dolphins are some of the most vocal animals in our oceans. Their pods are a bustling soundscape of clicks, whistles, and buzzy pulses. What to our ears is a creaking door or a melodic pop is to a dolphin a means to echolocate or communicate. They even have names—research has found they use 'signature whistles' to identify themselves, a sort of vocal version of a human's signature. These whistles are produced by one individual and repeated by another—'Jeff, Jeff'—to initiate or re-establish contact. The discovery back in 2013 that dolphins imitate each other's whistles showed that these cetaceans can understand and learn these unique sounds—a complex cognitive feat for non-human animals. Now a talkative bunch of wild bottlenose dolphins have revealed another talent: they appear to be using a broad repertoire of whistles that are not names. So far, researchers have identified 22 of these 'non-signature whistles' used by dozens of the dolphins. 'We have these non-signature whistles that seem potentially like they could function like words of some kind, with specific meanings,' says Laela Sayigh, a marine biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Sayigh and her team were recently awarded the Coller-Dolittle Prize for Two-way Inter-species Communication. Two of the whistles—with the catchy names NSWA and NSWB—seem to have a common function, one an alarm, the other a query, respectively. The findings, recently published as a preprint on bioRxiv, raise the question of whether dolphins may communicate using something akin to a language. 'If this pans out, it's a very, very big discovery in terms of understanding dolphin communication,' says Arik Kershenbaum, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge who was not involved in the research. But it's a big stretch at this point to consider these sounds similar to words, he says. 'Non-signature whistles have been of interest to researchers for ages and ages and no one's really got very far working on that. They're the big advantage of this study.' From scuba diving to set-jetting Creating a catalogue of dolphin chatter The idea that dolphins may have a language dates back to the 1960s, though any conclusive evidence has remained elusive. Studying communication among an underwater species is difficult to observe and dolphins don't make any recognizably consistent movements linked to their sounds. Yet for over forty years, scientists in the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program have carried out regular health assessments on a six-generation pod of around 170 wild dolphins that live in the waters around Florida's western coastline. As dolphins surfaced for air, researchers were able to record decades of dolphin vocalizations by briefly placing underwater microphones called hydrophones on their heads, as they swam in temporary net corrals. In 2012, the same research team began using digital acoustic tags fitted with suction cups, that ride on the back of the animals as they swim freely. These captured high-quality sounds and movement underwater. The result of this data is a giant catalogue of dolphin chit chat, based on more than 1,000 recording sessions made over the past 40 years. Commonly shared whistles Around 2017, while digging into some of this data, Sayigh noticed a strange whistle with an unusual flat tone in the middle. She was surprised to notice it was then used by another dolphin. 'I kind of thought I was going a little bonkers,' she says. But her team has now found more than 35 of the dolphins using the same signal. Based on the context in which the dolphins make it, the researchers think this whistle—NSWB—could function as some sort of question. In one instance, the researchers were running an experiment using a hydrophone dipped in the surface of the water. When they played the signature whistles of two closely bonded male dolphins as they swam together—they heard the query in return. 'On the boat we were joking that it was the 'WTF' whistle,' says Sayigh. 'It was kind of like, 'what's going on? We're together, but we're hearing us whistling to each other'.' The second most common non-signature whistle, NSWA, has been used by over 25 individual dolphins and is a punchy combination of up-and-down sweeps. During a series of trials using drones to monitor movement, the whistle seemed to cause most dolphins to avoid the source. 'That doesn't absolutely mean it's an alarm type call, but it seems like a reasonable starting point as a hypothesis,' says Sayigh. Jason Bruck, a biologist at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas who was not involved in the study, says that really nailing down what the whistles mean will be a big challenge that will need good behavioral data. 'If the animal swims away from the whistle, did you offend it somehow? Did you play an alarm whistle? Did you whistle something that was so loud it scared them? You have no idea what's going on inside that animal's head.' The research is still in its infancy. But dolphins are life-long learners, appear to use specific names, and females communicate at higher frequencies with their children—like human 'motherese.' The research team in Sarasota thinks this all suggests a wider repertoire of shared sounds that could reflect a starting point for a 'language-like communication system'. 'If there is a species that we might be able to kind of try to engage with in some kind of two way communication, these guys are really good candidates,' says Sayigh. Whether or not the dolphins' communication is 'language-like' depends on how 'language' is defined, says Sara Torres Ortiz, a biologist at the University of Southern Denmark also not involved in the research. If the criteria is referential signaling— specific sounds referring to specific objects or events—this ability has been seen in other animals, including vervet monkeys and prairie dogs. 'Given these precedents, it would not be surprising if dolphins also possess some form of referential communication,' she says. Other animals may even have communication systems that are more effective than the sounds and cues that humans think of as language, says Bruck, including dolphins who collect information about their friends through urine. 'If we take the animals out of our own heads and we take them for what they are, you find that there's a lot of complexity in what they do as it is.'
Times
04-05-2025
- Science
- Times
What's that Flipper? Scientists listen in on incredulous whistling dolphins
The official name for the dolphin vocalisation was 'non signature whistle B'. The 'suggested function of this whistle type', the researchers wrote in careful language, was 'as a 'query'.' They also had an unofficial, perhaps slightly less careful, name for it. Laela Sayigh, from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said they had called it 'the WTF whistle'. They used the unprintable internet acronym for incredulity because that was what seemed to be going on. It was a noise the dolphins seemed to make when something strange was afoot. Sayigh's work investigating this and other dolphin calls has led to her being shortlisted for the world's newest scientific award: the Coller-Dolittle prize for interspecies communication. This is a $100,000 annual prize for research into understanding what animals
