A dolphin is an aquatic mammal within the infraorder Cetacea. Dolphin species belong to the families Delphinidae, Platanistidae, Iniidae, Pontoporiidae, and possibly extinct Lipotidae. There are 40 extant species named as dolphins.
Bottlenose dolphins are aquatic mammals in the genus Tursiops. They are common, cosmopolitan members of the family Delphinidae, the family of oceanic dolphins. Molecular studies show the genus definitively contains three species: the common bottlenose dolphin, the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin, and Tamanend's bottlenose dolphin. Others, like the Burrunan dolphin, may be alternately considered their own species or be subspecies of T. aduncus. Bottlenose dolphins inhabit warm and temperate seas worldwide, being found everywhere except for the Arctic and Antarctic Circle regions. Their name derives from the Latin tursio (dolphin) and truncatus for their characteristic truncated teeth.
Oceanic dolphins or Delphinidae are a widely distributed family of dolphins that live in the sea. Close to forty extant species are recognised. They include several big species whose common names contain "whale" rather than "dolphin", such as the Globicephalinae. Delphinidae is a family within the superfamily Delphinoidea, which also includes the porpoises (Phocoenidae) and the Monodontidae. River dolphins are relatives of the Delphinoidea.
Cetacean intelligence is the overall intelligence and derived cognitive ability of aquatic mammals belonging in the infraorder Cetacea (cetaceans), including baleen whales, porpoises, and dolphins.
Animal cognition encompasses the mental capacities of non-human animals including insect cognition. The study of animal conditioning and learning used in this field was developed from comparative psychology. It has also been strongly influenced by research in ethology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary psychology; the alternative name cognitive ethology is sometimes used. Many behaviors associated with the term animal intelligence are also subsumed within animal cognition.
The Atlantic spotted dolphin is a dolphin found in warm temperate and tropical waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Older members of the species have a very distinctive spotted coloration all over their bodies.
Animal languages are forms of non-human animal communication that show similarities to human language. Animals communicate through a variety of signs, such as sounds or movements. Signing among animals may be considered a form of language if the inventory of signs is large enough. The signs are relatively arbitrary, and the animals seem to produce them with a degree of volition. In experimental tests, animal communication may also be evidenced through the use of lexigrams by chimpanzees and bonobos.
Bioacoustics is a cross-disciplinary science that combines biology and acoustics. Usually it refers to the investigation of sound production, dispersion and reception in animals. This involves neurophysiological and anatomical basis of sound production and detection, and relation of acoustic signals to the medium they disperse through. The findings provide clues about the evolution of acoustic mechanisms, and from that, the evolution of animals that employ them.
Whales use a variety of sounds for communication and sensation. The mechanisms used to produce sound vary from one family of cetaceans to another. Marine mammals, including whales, dolphins, and porpoises, are much more dependent on sound than land mammals due to the limited effectiveness of other senses in water. Sight is less effective for marine mammals because of the particulate way in which the ocean scatters light. Smell is also limited, as molecules diffuse more slowly in water than in air, which makes smelling less effective. However, the speed of sound is roughly four times greater in water than in the atmosphere at sea level. As sea mammals are so dependent on hearing to communicate and feed, environmentalists and cetologists are concerned that they are being harmed by the increased ambient noise in the world's oceans caused by ships, sonar and marine seismic surveys.
Human–animal communication is the communication observed between humans and other animals, ranging from non-verbal cues and vocalizations to the use of language.
Louis Herman was an American marine biologist. He was a researcher of dolphin sensory abilities, dolphin cognition, and humpback whales. He was professor in the Department of Psychology and a cooperating faculty member of the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He founded the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory (KBMML) in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1970 to study bottlenose dolphin perception, cognition, and communication. In 1975, he pioneered the scientific study of the annual winter migration of humpback whales into Hawaiian waters. Together with Adam Pack, he founded The Dolphin Institute in 1993, a non-profit corporation dedicated to dolphins and whales through education, research, and conservation.
Akeakamai was a female Atlantic bottlenose dolphin, who, along with a companion female dolphin named Phoenix, and later tankmates Elele and Hiapo, were the subjects of Louis Herman's animal language studies at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory in Honolulu, Hawaii. The most well-known paper is the original work described in Herman, Richards, & Wolz (1984). Akeakamai was also the subject of many other scientific studies of dolphin cognition, language acquisition, and sensory abilities.
Whitlow W. L. Au was a leading expert in bioacoustics specializing in biosonar of odontocetes. He is author of the widely known book The Sonar of Dolphins (1993) and, with Mardi Hastings, Principles of Marine Bioacoustics (2008). Au was honored as a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America in 1990 and awarded the ASA's first Silver Medal in Animal Bioacoustics in 1998. He was graduate advisor to MacArthur Fellow Kelly Benoit-Bird, who credits Au for discovering how sophisticated dolphin sonar is, developing dolphin-inspired machine sonars to separate different species of fish with the goal of protecting sensitive species, and for making numerous contributions to the description of Humpback whale song, which helped protect these whales from ship noise and ship traffic.
Deborah Fouts was the co-director of the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute (CHCI). CHCI was the home of Washoe, the first non-human to acquire a human language, and three other chimpanzees who use the signs of American Sign Language to communicate with each other and their human caregivers. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology (Research) at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington. She is married to former co-director, now retired Roger Fouts.
Underwater acoustics is the study of the propagation of sound in water and the interaction of the mechanical waves that constitute sound with the water, its contents and its boundaries. The water may be in the ocean, a lake, a river or a tank. Typical frequencies associated with underwater acoustics are between 10 Hz and 1 MHz. The propagation of sound in the ocean at frequencies lower than 10 Hz is usually not possible without penetrating deep into the seabed, whereas frequencies above 1 MHz are rarely used because they are absorbed very quickly.
The Dolphin Research Center (DRC) is a dolphinarium on Grassy Key, Florida. The 90,000-square-foot (8,400 m2) series of saltwater lagoons is home to several dolphins and California sea lions.
Tool use by non-humans is a phenomenon in which a non-human animal uses any kind of tool in order to achieve a goal such as acquiring food and water, grooming, combat, defence, communication, recreation or construction. Originally thought to be a skill possessed only by humans, some tool use requires a sophisticated level of cognition. There is considerable discussion about the definition of what constitutes a tool and therefore which behaviours can be considered true examples of tool use. A wide range of animals, including mammals, birds, fish, cephalopods, and insects, are considered to use tools.
Diana Reiss is a professor of psychology at Hunter College and in the graduate program of Animal Behavior and Comparative Psychology at the City University of New York. Reiss's research has focused on understanding cognition and communication in dolphins and other cetaceans. Her important contributions include demonstrating mirror self-awareness in dolphins via the Mirror test.
A signature whistle is a learned, individually distinctive whistle type in a bottlenose dolphin's acoustic repertoire that gives the identity of the whistle owner. The whistles are identified and studied in the wild or in captivity by researchers using hydrophones. Vocal learning strongly influences the development of signature whistles, which can remain stable for up to at least 12 years. More often than not, calves develop signature whistles by the sounds they hear while making sure that they differ from close associates. However, male calves tend to learn signature whistles that resemble their mother's. They are believed to be most frequently used in communication of captive bottlenose dolphins, along with having specialized functions and properties. Researchers define it as a whistle with a unique frequency curve that dominates in the repertoire of a dolphin. Each dolphin has a distinct signature whistle that other members of its social group use to individually identify the whistler. They are typically used for localisation purposes, however they also provide dolphins with behavioural context. Signature whistles also play an important role in group cohesion and social interaction.
Robert M. Seyfarth is an American primatologist and author. With his wife and collaborator Dorothy L. Cheney, he spent years studying the social behavior, communication, and cognition of wild primates in their natural habitat, including more than a decade of field work with baboons in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. Seyfarth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania until his retirement, is a member of both the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
