How Dolphins comunicate

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: anonentity

Surely an article in Omni counts as a 'release to the general public'?

he had worked out some system where it was transferred, through nerves in the spine

You mean electrical impulses were transferred directly into the spinal cord through electrodes?

Doesn't sound like a very useful means of communicating with anybody. Then again, you could pull the other one.

I kid you not. Take this for instance, where most of the ear is not used for hearing, Beethoven was deaf but used to listen to what he'd composed through his jaw bone. www.audioboneheadphones.com... its not a great leap to put the input vibrations through another nerve channel.

a reply to: anonentity

its not a great leap to put the input vibrations through another nerve channel.

On the contrary, it is far beyond anything humans are capable of.

Cool breakthrough... Folks have been trying for decades (since Lilly) to decipher their lingo... it makes sense they'd speak in 'sonigraphs'... neat-o.

Now to convince the rest of humanity to treat them well ... by keeping their oceans clean of pollutants and sonar ...and keeping them out of any form of captivity.. .completely.

As humans know other humans are smart and still torture and kill them, I'm not holding my breath (pun-ish meaning intended).

And yeah, Flipper's suicide kinda set the tone for the rest of my life... and spawned a few punk songs, too.

originally posted by: swanne
a reply to: Astyanax

Yeah, it should have been obvious indeed.

But a translation dictionary? The holy grail of communication between us and them! Maybe mankind will finally realise how intelligent these dolphins are, and grant them a higher esteem!

I wonder what the dolphins think. "Hey those air-monkeys are clever sometimes and cute in that dorky way when they flap around and try to swim like spastic turtles, but they're really annoying and psycho other times. I wonder when they're going to learn how to talk properly?"

a reply to: mbkennel

hehe, too true!

a reply to: mbkennel

Hey now let's be fair, we're talking about a species who finds and gang rapes porpoises, and uses puffer fish to get high. They're no angels.

Addendum: To add to this, I've noticed a tendency towards drastic societal differences as well as the capability for cruelty the more intelligent a species comes.

Dolphins can be saviors, or monsters, they've killed people by charging them to death for fun, they drowned people by holding them under while raping them, they've surrounded porpoises and beat them to death or raped them, they've discovered drugs by holding a puffer fish just long enough to get high then passing it on to their pod mates. On the other hand, they've also saved drowning victims, escorted lost people at sea to shore ect.

Apes are known to wage war, rape, capture females from other rival groups, hunt down and murder members of rival groups, ect. Almost every positive and negative thing humans have done as long as it doesn't require advanced tech, apes are known for morally.

Dolphins are intelligent, and that means, individuals, with a wide range of moral capability or lack thereof.

So I fully believe in recognizing dolphins, and apes and other sentient animals as people, I however, do not believe in doing so with rose covered glasses on. With sentient comes responsibility for ones actions, and like all people, these sentient beings come in shades of good and bad.