Dolphin Research Proposal

So I was watching this Nova special about intelligence in animals. They talked the famous talking parrot Alex, camouflaging mollusks, this one smart ass dog who actually inferred something, and some others.

To me, by far the most incredible feat was these two dolphins communicating about, creating, and then performing a new trick. Let's talk about dolphins for a bit. We know they are smart sea creatures capable of doing cool sea tricks, looking happy, and sometimes exhibiting very disturbing sexual behavior. We also know that they can use echolocation, and that they communicate using clicks and whistles. However, we don't exactly know the nature of this communication. Are they akin to, say, sounds that a theoretical caveman might make, i.e. a yell to signify danger, a grunt to signify food, a different grunt to signify other caveman things? Or do these clicks and whistles have structure? In other words, can dolphins discuss and exchange ideas?



So the Nova team went to a dolphin training center and posed this question. The trainers then communicated to their two star dolphins that they needed to create a new trick or else they won't be eating that night. (In reality, I have no idea what the trainers actually communicated to the dolphins, because all they did were a couple of hand gestures and a meditation pose.) Somehow, the dolphins knew exactly what they had to do. So they dove under water, did some clicks and other dolphin noises for about a minute, and then surfaced and did a completely brand new trick in unison. It would appear as if they were like, "Holy crap, they want us to do something original. Let's just swim upside down above the surface and wave our tails around. Yeah, that'll show'em!"

This does highly suggest a type of higher order communication in dolphins than just sounding out for danger and food. It's nice to speculate that dolphins can indeed one day plan a conquest of the land realm a la Simpsons style, but we can never know for sure. Unless...

Someone learns how to communicate in dolphin for real. So this got me thinking. What is the best way to learn a language? Since there doesn't exist a dolphin version of Rosetta Stone, the next best thing is total and complete immersion. And when is the optimal period of time for language learning? Early childhood of course. So in theory, if a child is raised by dolphins (but is concurrently raised by humans just to avoid the problems associated with feral children), then that child should become fluent in dolphin-speak, eventually translate to us what the clicks and whistles mean, and even build a machine that speaks dolphin. To any future biology Nobel Prize winners out there: You're welcome.

Then I thought about what possible and useful applications this could yield. I came up with exactly zero. Obviously, we cannot speak dolphin too well even if we did understand the language, because we humans lack the necessary facial cavities that dolphin-speak entails. At best, we can produce a machine that translates English to dolphin-speak. Even then, that machine would lack the emotional context behind whatever it is trying to say, and can only yield blank stares from dolphins. I mean, who would want take orders from a talking box, right?

It'll be like having a talking robot that wheels itself up to a group of people and tries to be cool. It can throw on a baseball cap sideways, talk in modern slang, and constantly rest its robo-arms on its crotch. But will it be successful? No. Despite the robot's effort and good intentions, its robotic voice will eclipse even its most witty comments. Imagine the robot speaking in monotone using misplaced pauses and accents,

"What...is...up...dawg...?"
"I...hear...that...bro..ther...."
"That is what...she...said..."

Very uncool.

This robot would undoubtedly fail in any social setting, just as the dolphin-speak robot would absolutely fail at communicating with dolphins.

However, even though it is completely worthless and morally reprehensible to raise a kid in a dolphin tank just so he can learn dolphin, I do believe it would be quite the interesting linguistic experiment to raise a kid in a dolphin environment. So please, Research Fund Committee, I implore you to accept my humble proposal for this landmark leap forward in dolphin studies.