Bottlenose Dolphins

Bottlenose dolphins identify each other using distinct “names”

A group of bottlenose dolphins off the east coast of Scotland identify individuals within the pod using distinct whistles. They use the “names” in order to broadcast their location to other dolphins, reported the Guardian.

Many animals are capable of copying sounds and can use them to display how fit they are, for example. But few are capable of learning to associate specific sounds with particular individuals or objects.

"If we look at complex ability in communication in human language, one of the key features that is important to us is that we can copy sounds, we can invent new sounds," said Vincent Janik, a biologist at St Andrews University, who led the research. "We can then use those sounds and attach some kind of meaning to them and use them to refer to objects and to refer to external things in the world."

The team from St Andrews watched a population of around 150-180 dolphins that live off the east coast of Scotland, following groups of between two and 20 dolphins at once. The team initially identified and recorded the signature whistles for individual dolphins and then played these whistles back to the entire group.

The sounds that the researchers played back were computerised reconstructions of the original sounds. They did this to remove the chance that what the dolphins were actually recognising was the voice of another rather than the sound.

The results showed that the dolphins responded to their own signature whistle by whistling their own “name” back but would ignore the whistles of others.

"The interesting thing about these is that they are not voice recognition," said Janik. "In humans you can have different people say the same word and I'd still be able to tell who's speaking. What we also do is have names, so they are very different call types. The dolphins do the same thing; they're developing a completely new call type, a melody or whistle, which is not dependent on their voice features."

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