Dave, UR - There is no Rosetta Stone for this...

I am still working out how I will get my third hydrophone, and may perhaps have to abandon the tri-hydrophone concept for the initial run this semester, in favor of narrowing my experiment to just evaluating collector shape.  Regardless, I can still talk about the intent and design of the experiment, and keep plugging at getting the right tools in hand.

With a large brain and complex behavior; dolphins are seemingly very smart

Dolphins are thought to be very smart creatures, but there are a number of contributing factors that establish this belief.  First, they have an encephalization quotient (EQ), or brain-to-body ratio, second only to humans. People land at a 7.0, dolphins at a 3.3, and great apes swing in at a 2.2.  This means that dolphins could be extremely smart, because we can understand their brain size, but have no quantitative measurement of its efficiency.

These cetaceans live in a fission-fusion society, where they grow up in a family group, and are then free to travel the ocean where they might live with five to seven different family groups in a lifetime. Through this process, they already have an established auditory and behavioral communication structure that can be likened to language and customs.  To this end, it is possible that we might understand how they communicate well enough to establish some nature of interactive dialogue.

Much of this work has been pioneered by Dr. Denise Herzing, of Florida Atlantic University, over the past thirty-one years. She has established the Wild Dolphin Project to expand her work, and ensure that her efforts continue forward.  Her last research update lecture from last October can be viewed here:

She has grouped their audible noises in an attempt to start pairing them to behaviors, and this is what she has established so far:

•Frequency Modulated Whistles

•Long Range Communication

•General interaction, Mother/Calf behavior, Signature whistles

•Burst Pulses

•Close Range Communication

•Head-to-head behavior, Aggression

•Buzzes

•Close Range Communication

•Courtship, Amorous behavior

•Echolocation Clicks

•Close to Medium Range Communication

•Modal support to vision, “Sonar”

 

The top three are considered "social" sounds, whereas the echolocation clicks are used for hunting and navigation. I will be primarily focusing on the social spectrum; approximately 10-40 kHz.  If you want to know more about echolocation, then check out Jack Kassewitz and his team at Speakdolphin.com.

It is my hope that building a collection array that will allow the direct monitoring of a singular organism within a group, will allow researchers to begin to pick apart the social context of dolphin interactions, and will bring us all one step closer to creating meaningful interaction.