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Related: About this forumBreaking the communication barrier between dolphins and humans
Monday, August 17, 2015 - 01:00
Its Time for a Conversation
Breaking the communication barrier between dolphins and humans
Joshua Foer
Head trainer Teri Turner Bolton looks out at two young adult male dolphins, Hector and Han, whose beaks, or rostra, are poking above the water as they eagerly await a command. The bottlenose dolphins at the Roatán Institute for Marine Sciences (RIMS), a resort and research institution on an island off the coast of Honduras, are old pros at dolphin performance art.
Theyve been trained to corkscrew through the air on command, skate backward across the surface of the water while standing upright on their tails, and wave their pectoral fins at the tourists who arrive several times a week on cruise ships.
But the scientists at RIMS are more interested in how the dolphins think than in what they can do. When given the hand signal to innovate, Hector and Han know to dip below the surface and blow a bubble, or vault out of the water, or dive down to the ocean floor, or perform any of the dozen or so other maneuvers in their repertoirebut not to repeat anything theyve already done during that session. Incredibly, they usually understand that theyre supposed to keep trying some new behavior each session.
Bolton presses her palms together over her head, the signal to innovate, and then puts her fists together, the sign for tandem. With those two gestures, she has instructed the dolphins to show her a behavior she hasnt seen during this session and to do it in unison. Hector and Han disappear beneath the surface. With them is a comparative psychologist named Stan Kuczaj, wearing a wet suit and snorkel gear and carrying a large underwater video camera with hydrophones.
More:
http://www.dailynews.lk/?q=features/breaking-communication-barrier-between-dolphins-and-humans#sthash.DhisOLGi.dpuf
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(153,142 posts)"Our hopes that one day we will communicate with dolphins......our fears they will cuss like sailors." - Jack Handey