Aquatic Culture - Dolphins Communication

Dolphins and the Possibility of Interspecies Communication

In 1985 I began a long-term project in the Bahamas to observe and study, underwater, a resident group of Atlantic spotted dolphins, Stenella frontalis. Over the last 16 years we've recorded life history information, communication (visual and postural) signals during fighting, foraging, and play, and how mothers teach their calves to hunt, fight, and babysit younger dolphins. The richness of behavior we've observed over 16 years at sea speaks of a culture of intelligent aquatic beings, with complex communication and flexible coping strategies in the world. Dolphins are the aquatic equivalent of an advanced terrestrial culture. Such observations reinforce the idea that perhaps dolphins would be good candidates with the motivation to interact with, and potentially communicate with humans.

The possibility of communicating with nonhuman animals has long fascinated humans as long ago as Aristotle. Interspecies interaction, specifically human/dolphin, is a very old phenomenon but a reemerging field of scientific inquiry. The more we inquire into the lives and minds of dolphins, and other toothed whales, the more we find evidence of complex societies, communication, and cultures. Only recently have we begun to search in the wild for such evidence and opportunities to work. This interest stems from years of exploring the possibilities of communication with other species, usually in non-wild environments.

Our History Exploring Dolphin Communication
Many of our popular beliefs about dolphins come from the work and writings of John Lilly. Originally a neurophysiologist with an interest in the dolphin brain, Lilly began to understand that dolphins were too intelligent to experiment on, and forged his own path to interspecies communication. Although his later work remains controversial, many of his original ideas remain intriguing. Lilly pursued a controversial career, trying to teach dolphins English and matching vocal output by the dolphins to humans. Although able to mimic the prosodic aspects of human speech such as rhythm and intensity, the dolphins were unable to produce consonants involved in the production of English sounds, most likely due to the lack of necessary anatomy.

Since Lilly's time a picture has emerged from long-term research projects around the world. Ken Norris and his colleagues in Hawaii have studied spinner dolphins, Stenella longirostris, Randall Wells and his colleagues in Sarasota, Florida continue to study bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus, and my ongoing work in the Bahamas studying Atlantic spotted dolphins, Stenella frontalis. We know many realistic aspects about life as a dolphin in the wild both biologically and ecologically. But what will it really take to break the code, to build a bridge between species, in this case an aquatic mind evolved over a 30 million year old aquatic in a socially complex environment?