When communicating with young children, humans often use high-pitched baby talk. Interestingly, it appears that dolphins also engage in this behavior.
During the early months of their lives, each common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) develops a unique signature whistle, similar to a name. These dolphins use their “names” in the water, most likely as a way to identify each other, according to marine biologist Laela Sayigh from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
However, dolphin mothers seem to modify their signature whistles when their calves are present. Calves typically stay close to their mothers for three to six years. Sayigh first observed this change in a 2009 study conducted by one of her students. However, she notes that it was just a small part of a larger study.
To further investigate this observation, Sayigh and her colleagues analyzed the signature whistles of 19 female dolphins, both with and without their calves nearby. The researchers captured audio recordings from a wild population living near Sarasota Bay, Florida, during catch-and-release health assessments conducted between 1984 and 2018.
2023-06-26 14:00:00
Post from www.sciencenews.org