Silent dolphins from Port Phillip Bay

Liz Hawkins a PhD student is researching dolphins and their methods of communicating in the wild and has developed new software that match�s individual dolphin whistles with behaviors. This young student had as I read recorded at the time the article was writing 68 or more individual dolphin whistles and the behaviors that where associated with them. During here research she found that the dolphins of port Philip bay where silent and as far as she could tell not communicating like normal.

Liz Hawkins: I threw my hydrophone and the dolphins were facing us so we should have been able to hear every sound they emitted. Why weren�t they emitting anything?

Boat noise occurs at roughly the same frequency as normal dolphin communication. So in the face of overwhelming interference, were the dolphins simply giving up and going mute?

Or, as Liz began to suspect, were the supposedly silent dolphins actually doing something much cleverer.

And with the realisation dolphins could change frequency, Liz had a brainwave about the mystery of the silent dolphins from Port Phillip Bay.

What if when boats were around, they weren�t silent at all.

What if, they too had cleverly worked out how to switch channels.

Now to the interesting bit that is not well know the dolphins have changed the frequency at which that communicate with one another so to cut out the interference we cause in the frequency spectrum they use. That to me is a sign of great intelligence not in the human type as with mathematics� but with the ability to change something so complex like that to stop the noise interference is incredibly.

Source www.abc.net.au...

[edit on 12-7-2004 by dwh0]

It wouldn't suprise me.. researchers have been saying dolfins were extremly intelligent for years. I imagine if they had hands they'd be using tools.