Dolphins, Like Humans, Recognize Names

From: Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters
Published May 9, 2006 12:00 AM

Dolphins, Like Humans, Recognize Names

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Dolphin Intelligence

April 1, 2009 11:18 AMWASHINGTON — Bottlenose dolphins can call each other by name when they whistle, making them the only animals besides humans known to recognize such identity information, scientists reported Monday.

Scientists have long known that dolphins' whistling calls include repeated information thought to be their names, but a new study indicates dolphins recognize these names even when voice cues are removed from the sound.

For example, a dolphin might be expected to recognize its name if called by its mother, but the new study found most dolphins recognized names -- their signature whistles -- even when emitted without inflection or other vocal cues.

More than that, two dolphins may refer to a third by the third animal's name, said Laela Sayigh, one of three authors of a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"They are known to produce these individually distinctive signature whistles, like names," Sayigh said in a telephone interview. She said the researchers wanted to know what information in the whistles helped dolphins identify each other's names.

The scientists already knew that dolphins responded to whistles, but wondered if something in the actual voice of the whistling dolphin was making the identity clear, or if the name itself was enough for recognition.