Do you believe we will ever be able to communicate with dolphins, whales, etc.?

[Nakura Chambers]

Assuming they're sapient, do you think we will ever be able to communicate with them? How would we interact? How would both of our societies change?

[Nanaboostme]

what exactly are you categorizing with 'etc'? Intelligent mammals? We already communicate with them just not with language. Just look at the history of the evolution of domesticated dogs. They've relied on us since the hunting days hence why dogs and humans have the best compatibility

[Felya]

What sort of conversations do you think you will have? Give me fish, can get get boring fast.

[Deleted]

What sort of conversations do you think you will have? Give me fish, can get get boring fast.

Yes. While they might be intelligent/on the verge of intelligence... they probably don't have capability for abstraction.
Then again, if we could talk to humans from 200.000 years ago, or 20.000, they might not have a very stimulating conversation either.

[geewhiz80]

You should check this out. This is about 2 years old, but people are already starting to decipher how to communicate with dolphins.

http://www.speakdolphin.com/ResearchItems.cfm?ID=20

[PACOX]

Do we want do? A lot of dolphin and whales species (the ones with the teeth) are pretty fucked up. Orcas and dolphins are some of the deviant creatures known to man.

[Dezerte]

Google Koko. It's a gorilla that was taught sign language.

[Curanhadin]

To a small degree, but most animals from we can tell cant form abstract thoughts so we might get simple communication like im hungry or things like that but they can already be trained to tell us things like that through sign language of sorts.

[Stir]

I voted 'yes,' even though 'dolphins and whales' are stupid as shit.
There's a few very intelligent species out there, but to say 'dolphins and whales are intelligent!' is like saying 'Tables are green!' Sure; there's green tables, and all the tables of a particular brand or carpenter might be green, but that doesn't make all tables ever green.

[MerinPally]

I voted 'yes,' even though 'dolphins and whales' are stupid as shit.
There's a few very intelligent species out there, but to say 'dolphins and whales are intelligent!' is like saying 'Tables are green!' Sure; there's green tables, and all the tables of a particular brand or carpenter might be green, but that doesn't make all tables ever green.

Could say the same thing about a good percentage of the human population. I'm all for research into being able to communicate with them, because it's one of those things you'd do "BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING AWESOME AND WE CAN" which is what science should be about. Unfortunately it's not but the odd thing like that is great and someone would fund it inevitably.

So I voted yes because eventually I reckon we could.

[Stir]

Could say the same thing about a good percentage of the human population. I'm all for research into being able to communicate with them, because it's one of those things you'd do "BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING AWESOME AND WE CAN" which is what science should be about. Unfortunately it's not but the odd thing like that is great and someone would fund it inevitably.

No... You could say the same thing about the 'Primate' group. Because that's comparable to the description above. Now; if were were to throw it on a single species, then we will have to accept that both the most intelligent species of Dolphin and the human species is fucked up beyond recognition. We wage war constantly, and they gang-rape everything that isn't human. Yes, human. Apparently, we're the only species they're afraid of.

But yeah, if we could get homo sapiens and bottle nose dolphins to exchange cultural values, things could be great as long as we don't teach them about war, and they don't teach us about sex crimes.

[Speaknoevil]

We can already communicate with dolphins and whales.

[Komati]

Wha...? Why would we want to communicate with whales and dolphins?

[Deleted]

According to studies done using Zipf's law, the "language" that dolphins speak has a similar word/frequency distribution on the graph to many human languages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf's_law
http://www.peterrussell.com/Dolphin/DolphinLang.php

In general, a graph distribution like that means that the language holds some sort of meaning (as opposed to a random list of characters/sounds). if dolphins can communicate with each other in such a meaningful way, it is just a matter of time before we find a way to decode it.

[Deleted]

According to studies done using Zipf's law, the "language" that dolphins speak has a similar word/frequency distribution on the graph to many human languages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf's_law
http://www.peterrussell.com/Dolphin/DolphinLang.php

In general, a graph distribution like that means that the language holds some sort of meaning (as opposed to a random list of characters/sounds). if dolphins can communicate with each other in such a meaningful way, it is just a matter of time before we find a way to decode it.

If the content of their conversations, though, is at the level of hip-hop or reggaeton... we're better off not knowing
Maybe they use their language only to make d**k jokes.

[bleh bleh 420 bleh]

We can communicate with alot of domesticated species and other species can communicate with eachother. So yes, we will be able to some day. However it will never come to the point where we are having conversations with animals but well understand eachother.

---------- Post added 2013-05-28 at 09:22 AM ----------

Wha...? Why would we want to communicate with whales and dolphins?

Have you not seen Austin Powers? If we can recruit the dolphins we can equip them with lazer beams and we can have super marine soldiers.

[Simulacrum]

We already communicate with dolphins and whales.

Seriously, what kind of question is this. Next up: Will we ever be able to communciate with dogs?

[Felya]

Yes. While they might be intelligent/on the verge of intelligence... they probably don't have capability for abstraction.
Then again, if we could talk to humans from 200.000 years ago, or 20.000, they might not have a very stimulating conversation either.

We have at least 20000 years until dolphin's speaking leads to more than just knowing when they are horny or hungry? Talking to animals is over rated. You tell a dog to jump over a car, they will respond with feed me, not even asking wtf a car is.

---------- Post added 2013-05-28 at 02:10 PM ----------

We already communicate with dolphins and whales.

Seriously, what kind of question is this. Next up: Will we ever be able to communciate with dogs?

There is an assumption that talking to animals would lead to some unknown truths. When the reality is that we do communicate with animals and all they want to do is eat and screw.

[Nakura Chambers]

There is an assumption that talking to animals would lead to some unknown truths. When the reality is that we do communicate with animals and all they want to do is eat and screw.

Dogs lack the cognitive functions to carry a conscious, let alone abstract, conversation. It remains to be seen if some dolphins, whales and primates, have that capacity.

[Gheld]

You should check this out. This is about 2 years old, but people are already starting to decipher how to communicate with dolphins.

http://www.speakdolphin.com/ResearchItems.cfm?ID=20

The problem with this though is that learning language requires immersion into the conscious experience of the speaker. The human experience and the dolphin experience are two completely different things. So actually learning the language itself would require some manner of robotic dolphin that could live with the dolphins and mimic their behaviors.

Then comes the question of dialect. Do all dolphins speak the same language, or do they speak many languages, and if so how often do these languages come into existence and how often do they go extinct? If the time it takes to learn a dolphin language is greater than the time it takes for one to be phased out, then we have a problem.