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Apes’ and Children’s Understanding of Cooperative and Competitive Communication
How do apes and humans differ? There are a lot of answers, but one way is communication! Esther Hermann and Michael Tomasello conducted research to test an ape’s ability to understand a human’s communicative motive. To do this they took a look at how an ape interprets pointing. Additionally, the researchers did the same tests…
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How Do Humpback Whales Learn Their Songs?
A Review of “Cultural Confusion: Parsimony, Social Learning, and Humpback Whales” By Heidi Lyn Humpback whales are well known for their elaborate vocal songs, but how do they learn these? Dr. Heidi Lyn – a comparative psychologist studying cognition and communication in non-human animals – has taken a look at how scientists have analyzed this…
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Masking – Are we louder than dolphins?
With human activity increasing both in coastal and deep ocean, the world’s ocean has become quite a noisy environment. Concerned researchers have investigated how this may be impacting marine life, including marine mammals. One study has investigated the potential effects of pile driving on the dynamics of bottlenose dolphin populations. Importance of Sound to Bottlenose…
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Who’s Saying What? Answers from New Tech
While researchers have studied dolphin communication for decades, science has only been able to generalize what signals are used during behaviors. This is because technology has not been available to localize or tell us which individual is talking and what signals they are emitting. When researchers record communication and behaviors, typically a hydrophone and separate…
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Soundscapes
What is a soundscape? Let’s say you step outside your house, a plane flies over head, 5 o’clock traffic is happening down the road, a nice breeze sweeps by and rustles the trees, and your neighbor’s kids are playing with the sprinkler in their front yard — all these sounds coming in and hitting your…
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“I did it!” – Dolphins cheer for themselves
Dolphins may call success and squeal in victory when completing a task correctly or catching prey. Dolphins emit different types of vocalizations to transmit information about food, location and emotional state. One type of vocalization is called a “burst pulse”. Burst pulse signals are considered rapid click trains and have been observed when dolphins are…
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New Website design up!
We are working hard to get the new website up and running and full of links where you can find our work and our information. Hope there will be more soon!
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COVID Updates
Due to the Ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, we currently have no research ongoing in the lab rooms. We continue to analyze and write up our data and we plan big things for the year ahead – stay tuned!
Talking Animals
Science Communication for people who always wanted to talk to animals