AI will help understand dolphin language - scientists have taken the first step

Scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (USA) have for the first time found strong evidence that dolphins use something resembling human language.

Details: Laela Sayigh et al, First evidence for widespread sharing of stereotyped non-signature whistle types by wild dolphins, bioRxiv (2025). DOI: 10.1101/2025.04.21.647658

🎤 Not just whistles - but words?

Researchers for more than 50 years studied the population of afalines (this is such a species of dolphins) off the coast of Sarasota in Florida. The main interest was the so-called "non-signature whistles" - sounds that dolphins make not to mark themselves, but perhaps to communicate with each other. Such whistles - almost half of all "speech" dolphins, but until recently, no one really understood what they mean.

Biologist Leila Sayg's team recorded the dolphins using mini-hydrophones, which are attached to the skin with suction cups, and also used digital underwater microphones. And it turned out: certain types of whistles are regularly repeated in different dolphins, which may suggest "words" understood by the whole group.

🚨 Warning whistle and question whistle

In experiments, scientists played these sounds to dolphins and observed their reactions. One of the whistles elicited obvious wariness - perhaps an "alarm call". The other the dolphins made in response to surprise, which resembles a "question."

"We believe these whistles fulfil the function of words used by the whole group," Saig explains. "This can be compared to how humans have common words that everyone understands, not just personal 'names'."

🧠 Artificial intelligence to the rescue

The research has already won a Coller Dolittle Challenge award and $100,000 for its contribution to the study of animal 'languages'. Now the team plans to use AI to decipher the giant array of recordings and build something like an underwater dictionary.

Prize organiser, Jeremy Coller, said: 'We've been talking only to each other for too long. It's time to start listening to the rest of the planet's inhabitants."