Social Functions of Signature Whistles and Whistle Imitation in Bottlenose Dolphins, Tursiops truncatus

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PI: Tyack, Peter L.Proposal #: 9975523For years, scientists have known that each bottlenose dolphin has an individually distinctive vocalization called a signature whistle. It is thought that these whistles allow dolphins to recognize each other and remain in contact in murky water. Dolphins also imitate the signature whistles of others. There are two ideas about why dolphins do this: imitating another dolphin's whistle may be a way to initiate a friendly interaction, or to aggressively challenge another dolphin. It has been difficult to confirm these ideas about dolphin communication because we humans cannot localize the source of sounds underwater, and dolphins make few visible signs to tell us which one is vocalizing. We propose to resolve this problem by studying dolphins in a naturalistic captive setting, where we can use computers and an array of underwater microphones to locate each whistle, and an overhead video system to simultaneously locate each dolphin. Knowing which dolphin is making a sound while observing their behavior will allow us to identify the social contexts in which dolphins make their own signature whistle or imitates another's whistle, and to determine how other dolphins respond to these whistles.Dolphins are unusual among non-human mammals in their ability to imitate sounds. Imitation is critical for the development of human language and music, but there is little evidence for this ability even among our closest primate relatives. Thus, comparative studies of dolphin communication may help us to understand the evolution of vocal imitation in mammals.