Bottlenose dolphins can call each other by name when they whistle,
making them the only animals besides humans know to recognize such 1. __________
identity information, scientists reported on Monday.
Dolphins communicate as humans by calling each other by name, 2. __________
scientists in Fife reported on Monday.
Scientists have long known that dolphins’ whistling calls including repeated 3. __________
information thought to be their names, but a new study indicates dolphins
recognize these names even when voice cues are removed in the sound. 4. __________
St Andrews University researchers studying in Sarasota Bay off
Florida’s west coast Florida discovered bottlenose dolphins used names
rather than sound to identify each other.
The three-years-study was funded by the Royal Society of London. 5. __________
Dr Vincent Janik, of the Sea Mammal Unit at St Andrews University,
said they conduced the research on wild dolphins. 6. __________
“We captured wild dolphins using nets when they came near the
shore,” he said.
“Then in the deep water we recoded their whistles before synthesizing 7. __________
them on a computer with the caller’s voice features removed so that we
have a computer voice of a dolphin.” 8. __________
“Then we played it back to the dolphins through an underwater speaker
and we found they responded coolly. This showed us that the dolphins 9. __________
know each other’s signature whistle instead just the voice.” 10. _________
“Now we know they have labels for each other like we do.”
The findings are published in the US journal the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).