When a dolphin whistles, what does it mean?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, it's Flora Lichtman, and you're listening to Science Friday. Investigating an iconic animal sound. The dolphin whistle. But what exactly is that dolphin saying? My next guest is trying to find out. She's an expert in dolphin communication and has been compiling a database of whistles from a pot of dolphins in Sarasota, Florida, that's been studied since the 1970s.
What are dolphins actually saying with their iconic whistles?
And she's working to answer some fundamental questions about dolphin dialects. Dr. Leila Saig is a senior research specialist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Leila, thank you for being here.
You're welcome. Thank you for having me.
Let's do some Dolphin Whistle 101. So every dolphin has something called a signature whistle. Let's listen to some examples first. Okay, so what is a signature whistle?
Yeah, well, signature whistles are the closest thing to human names that we know of in the animal world. They really are a lot like our own names. So each dolphin has their own. They do make their own signature whistles a fair bit, which is sort of different than how we use our own names because we can usually see each other. But they use them maybe when they're out, you know, sort of in places where they can't see each other and use them to keep in touch.
They're like, Flora here, something like that.
Yes, yes, that's right. That's right. Well, they'll kind of call out, I'm here, I'm here. But they do also copy each other and they will copy another dolphin's signature whistle as a way of calling out to them, which is more in line with how we use our names.
Do they name themselves? Like, how does a signature whistle come to be?
Oh, that's kind of the $60 million question or whatever. It was actually the focus of my PhD dissertation a long time ago. And I still cannot give you an answer. I wish I could. It's something I would love to know the answer to. We know they do learn their sounds. So they learn to produce their whistles. And that's a really cool thing in and of itself because a lot of animals don't learn, but obviously we do. And so that's something that's really important to us. We know in Sarasota, the population that I study, that about a third of the calves end up developing whistles that are pretty similar to their moms. I was actually just looking at one yesterday that was literally identical to his mom, although that's not very common at all.
And in fact, more common is for them to not develop whistles like their moms. And we have no idea why some do and some don't. And yeah, anyway, questions that I would love to know the answers to.
Are they unique? Like, does every dolphin have a different signature whistle or like half of them named, you know, Jane?
That's a great question too. Well, so for the most part, they are unique.
What is a signature whistle and how does it function?
Usually at the very least, there's some subtle difference that we can use to differentiate one animal from another. Like it might end up going in an upsweep versus a down, something like that, even if the rest of it looks the same. Although occasionally we do run into these very unusual situations like the calf that I was just mentioning that really developed a whistle that is so similar to his mom that we can't distinguish it. At least we can't. It's possible that there are some features that enable them to. But usually the distinctions are pretty visible to us. Like we can see really big differences among the whistles for the most part.
And do they ID themselves the same way to their friends as they do to their families? Like do they have different signature whistles for themselves in different scenarios? We have not.
Seen evidence for that, although I wouldn't say that we have really looked specifically for that. They do vary aspects of their whistles in ways that make actually classifying their whistles a bit complicated. I guess other than one exception there, which I might just mention, we did look at the signature whistles of the adult females when they were communicating with their cats. calves versus not with their calves, with other animals. And in that study, we did find that they tended to increase the maximum frequency of their whistles when they were communicating with their calves.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:03–0:32
2
What are dolphins actually saying with their iconic whistles?
0:32–3:05
3
What is a signature whistle and how does it function?
3:05–7:53
4
How do dolphins learn and develop their signature whistles?
7:53–12:49
5
Are signature whistles unique to each dolphin?
12:49–14:51
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Science Friday
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