First evidence of possible language-like communication in dolphins

Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and partner institutions, including the Brookfield Zoo Chicago’s Sarasota Dolphin Research Program (SDRP), are the winners of the inaugural Coller Dolittle Challenge for their work in identifying possible language-like communication in dolphins.

The Jeremy Coller Foundation and Tel Aviv University made the announcement of the $100,000 prize during a virtual event with four short-listed teams of researchers from the U.S., Germany, France, and Israel, showcasing their remarkable discoveries in communication with monkeys, nightingales, and cuttlefish. All four finalists used cutting-edge technology, science, and ingenuity to decipher, interface and mimic non-human organism communication.

Biologist Laela Sayigh led the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution team, including WHOI’s Peter Tyack. Vincent Janik from the University of St. Andrews, Frants Jensen from Aarhus University, Katie McHugh, and Randall Wells from the Brookfield Zoo Chicago’s SDRP were also a part of the research science teams, working with a resident bottlenose dolphin community in Sarasota, Florida.

Their study, which is available on the bioRxiv preprint server, focused on non-signature whistles—which comprise approximately 50% of whistles produced by Sarasota dolphins. Non-signature whistles differ from the more widely-studied signature whistles—which are name-like vocalizations.

“Bottlenose dolphins have long-fascinated animal communication researchers,” said Sayigh. “Without the over five-decade-long study by the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, we would not have such an extensive library of vocalizations for individual dolphins. With this, we can study non-signature whistles, which have received very little research attention to date. Our work shows that these whistles could potentially function like words, shared by multiple dolphins.”

The winning study identified distinct non-signature whistle types used by multiple dolphins for communication. Using playback experiments performed under completely natural conditions in the wild, the team elicited avoidance responses for one non-signature whistle, suggesting an alarm function. A second non-signature whistle was found to correlate to a query function, produced in response to an unexpected or unfamiliar situation.

Sayigh’s team recorded known individual dolphins with non-invasive suction-cup hydrophones placed on the animals during unique catch-and-release health assessments, as well as with digital acoustic tags.

According to Jeremy Coller, founder of the Coller Dolittle Challenge, “Humans share this planet with millions of other species, but for far too long we’ve only talked among ourselves. The Coller Dolittle Challenge aims to change that, so I’m excited by the fascinating work Laela and her team have done on dolphin communication. They are worthy winners and I can’t wait to see how they use AI to further interpret this vast set of data.”