The discovery that a dolphin can imitate
the signature whistle of another offers a glimpse of how these marine mammals converse
Is it thought that there might not be a rigid procedure for how dolphins from different pods meet, but rather, whoever wants to say «hello» just calls out
the signature whistle of the individual they are looking for.
Not exact matches
Of these, 10 were seen copying each other's
signature whistles, which the dolphins make to identify themselves to each other.
Justin Gregg
of the Dolphin Communication Project in Old Mystic, Connecticut, remains cautious, and points out that the dolphins may copy the
signature whistles simply because they hear them a lot.
A new study published online by the proceedings
of the National Academy
of Sciences indicates that each dolphin has a so - called
signature whistle that identifies it.
Until recently, researchers could study
signature whistles only in captive animals — raising the question
of whether the
whistle developed in response to capture, isolation, or stress.
Even more intriguing was that only one member
of each group gave the
signature whistle.
A 2004 study showed that a group
of free - swimming bottlenose dolphins in Florida did indeed use
signature whistles.
The dolphins used
signature whistles when meeting up with another group, Quick and Janik report online today in the Proceedings
of the Royal Society B. What's more, they gave the distinctive
whistle only if they actually mingled with the other dolphins.
(Inset: The spectrogram
of Kai's
signature contact
whistle.)
The animals can easily reproduce each other's
signatures, and they often do this so - called
whistle - matching when out
of sight from one another.
A sequence analysis verified that most
of the
whistles used during joins were
signature whistles.
However, from our study, it is now clear that
signature whistles are a vehicle to negotiate approaches between groups
of animals, as the exchanges occurred only during group encounters.
The data show that
signature whistle exchanges are a significant part
of a greeting sequence that allows dolphins to identify conspecifics when encountering them in the wild.
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-LSB-...] We found no evidence for a deceptive function
of signature whistle copies.
The study is publicly accessible without a pay subscription, so if you're curious, check it out: Vocal copying
of individually distinctive
signature whistles in bottlenose dolphins.