Dr. Laela Sayigh

And then that's how they coined them, the signature whistles, because they were unique for each individual.

And we do find in these health assessment contexts, not 100%, but we see maybe about 85% of any particular dolphin will typically be one specific

whistle type.

And so that's how we are able to call that the signature.

But then we also can confirm that by studying those same dolphins when they're just out swimming around doing their own thing.

And we observe those same whistles.

So we know that they're not just making some kind of, you know, different type of call when they're in that health assessment context, they are making their signatures.

Yes, there are.

So there's, as I already mentioned, signature whistle copies, which are pretty cool.

And, you know, again, more like how we use our names.

But then there are also a whole bunch of other types of whistles that we call non-signature whistles, which I wish had a different name because it's kind of a lame term.

kind of a lame name for them, but we'll be happy to take suggestions from people of other things we could call them.

But for now, that's what they're called.

And we have really only just started really studying these whistles in earnest.

For many years, we kind of thought they were just sort of random.

We were pretty focused on the signature whistles and we would see these other whistles and be like, okay, those are, in fact, they used to be called variant whistles, which sort of implied that there was just something weird about them or whatever.

And

But we stopped calling them variant whistles.

They're now just called non-signature whistles.

And we now know that there is not something weird about them.