I get asked how smart are dolphins a lot
the better question is how are dolphins
smart one thing we’re interested in is
how do dolphins make sense of their
world how do they perceive their world
how do they conceptualize their world
how do they represent their world how do
they communicate with one another and
that’s what we’re trying to look at in
terms of cognition we’re giving them
tests which we think reflect cognitive
abilities like for example one the
projects on the dolphins Plus in Key
Largo was where the dolphin had to
cooperate to open a device to get fish
we know that they do cooperate but can
they cooperate to solve a novel task
these animals are not accustomed to
pulling ropes these animals are not
accustomed to actually opening their
mouths on you know things in training
sessions how can we test this so we’ve
come up with a lot of cognitive tasks
we’re trying to pair a behavior that
they already know with a symbol on the
board we want to get a little bit more
insight into each Dolphins cognitive
process and seeing do they do the
behavior that they learned first do they
do the compatible behaviors the
incompatible behavior one at a time do
they go left to right right to left you
know just just looking at the way we
read tells us so much about our
cognitive process so that’s kind of the
basis of the of the study self
recognition behavior is often put into a
broad category our populations here at
dolphins + and dolphin Cove – have not
been exposed to a mirror at all and what
we found is that we started to see
changes in their vocalizations well a
lot of the times the mothers would stop
in front of the mirror different squeaks
and squawks and jaw pops even where the
juveniles tend to be more social with
you know approach the mirror with other
individuals typical behaviors in front
of the mirror may not be self
recognition it may be why does this
dolphin look so
the smear why is it not talking back to
me why is it why is it just mimicking
what I’m doing self recognition behavior
I think the study needs to continue on a
little bit more for us to be definitive
about yes this is exactly what we’re
seeing in my opinion I think we’re just
scratching the surface we know more
about the moon than we do about our
oceans let alone our species in the
ocean I believe strongly that in order
to understand dolphins need to study
wild populations and we need to study
animals that are in captivity so the
advantages of working with wild dolphins
is you have a great variety of
individuals and natural context of
behaviors just fishing and fighting or
whatever that are normally there’s no
human disturbance except us in the water
potentially the wild dolphin project is
a long-term project I started in 1985
the goal of the project is really to
track long-term the life of a group of
wild dolphins specifically our aim is to
really look at the communication system
of these wild dolphins and figure out
how they communicate in acoustics and
body language and how complex their
society is we’ve got about 40 types of
vocalizations so there’s different kinds
of whistles there’s different kind of
click trains which is their sonar or
their echolocation and then we have
burst pulse sounds they’re actually a
very frequently heard type of social
sound so we would categorize those types
of sounds based on different acoustic
parameters and then correlate it this
this one has different measurements as I
look at the data so I might say okay
that’s walk type see all the studies
we’ve done in captivity everything tells
us that these guys have big brains and
that they can problem solve and
understand artificial languages and and
think in abstract terms that how do they
apply those skills in the wild I think
one of the most surprising things to me
after working in awhile for almost 30
years is that the individuals are so
distinct you know we tend to think of a
dolphin
as a dolphin as a dolphin and they’re
not individuals can be bold it can be
shy they can be the networkers and a big
group or they can be peripheral animals
and so you know when we lose dolphins or
we lose even a small group of dolphins
it can really matter but it’s something
we did to sort of switch our brains
around a little bit
the better question is how are dolphins
smart one thing we’re interested in is
how do dolphins make sense of their
world how do they perceive their world
how do they conceptualize their world
how do they represent their world how do
they communicate with one another and
that’s what we’re trying to look at in
terms of cognition we’re giving them
tests which we think reflect cognitive
abilities like for example one the
projects on the dolphins Plus in Key
Largo was where the dolphin had to
cooperate to open a device to get fish
we know that they do cooperate but can
they cooperate to solve a novel task
these animals are not accustomed to
pulling ropes these animals are not
accustomed to actually opening their
mouths on you know things in training
sessions how can we test this so we’ve
come up with a lot of cognitive tasks
we’re trying to pair a behavior that
they already know with a symbol on the
board we want to get a little bit more
insight into each Dolphins cognitive
process and seeing do they do the
behavior that they learned first do they
do the compatible behaviors the
incompatible behavior one at a time do
they go left to right right to left you
know just just looking at the way we
read tells us so much about our
cognitive process so that’s kind of the
basis of the of the study self
recognition behavior is often put into a
broad category our populations here at
dolphins + and dolphin Cove – have not
been exposed to a mirror at all and what
we found is that we started to see
changes in their vocalizations well a
lot of the times the mothers would stop
in front of the mirror different squeaks
and squawks and jaw pops even where the
juveniles tend to be more social with
you know approach the mirror with other
individuals typical behaviors in front
of the mirror may not be self
recognition it may be why does this
dolphin look so
the smear why is it not talking back to
me why is it why is it just mimicking
what I’m doing self recognition behavior
I think the study needs to continue on a
little bit more for us to be definitive
about yes this is exactly what we’re
seeing in my opinion I think we’re just
scratching the surface we know more
about the moon than we do about our
oceans let alone our species in the
ocean I believe strongly that in order
to understand dolphins need to study
wild populations and we need to study
animals that are in captivity so the
advantages of working with wild dolphins
is you have a great variety of
individuals and natural context of
behaviors just fishing and fighting or
whatever that are normally there’s no
human disturbance except us in the water
potentially the wild dolphin project is
a long-term project I started in 1985
the goal of the project is really to
track long-term the life of a group of
wild dolphins specifically our aim is to
really look at the communication system
of these wild dolphins and figure out
how they communicate in acoustics and
body language and how complex their
society is we’ve got about 40 types of
vocalizations so there’s different kinds
of whistles there’s different kind of
click trains which is their sonar or
their echolocation and then we have
burst pulse sounds they’re actually a
very frequently heard type of social
sound so we would categorize those types
of sounds based on different acoustic
parameters and then correlate it this
this one has different measurements as I
look at the data so I might say okay
that’s walk type see all the studies
we’ve done in captivity everything tells
us that these guys have big brains and
that they can problem solve and
understand artificial languages and and
think in abstract terms that how do they
apply those skills in the wild I think
one of the most surprising things to me
after working in awhile for almost 30
years is that the individuals are so
distinct you know we tend to think of a
dolphin
as a dolphin as a dolphin and they’re
not individuals can be bold it can be
shy they can be the networkers and a big
group or they can be peripheral animals
and so you know when we lose dolphins or
we lose even a small group of dolphins
it can really matter but it’s something
we did to sort of switch our brains
around a little bit
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