Part 9

Recently we have obtained evidence that shows that the dolphins communicate most of their information in the band of frequencies extending from about 8 kilocycles to 20 kilocycles by means of whistles and sonic clicks. However, as shown by Schevill and Lawrence, they can hear sounds at least to 120 kilocycles and as shown by Kellogg can produce sounds at least to 170 kilocycles. We have recently been investigating the higher frequency bands in these animals and have reliable evidence that they can hear at least to 200 kilocycles and can produce sounds to at least 200 kilocycles. With the proper electronic equipment one can listen to the nearer portions of the upper band and quickly determine that they can transmit in these bands without the necessity of transmitting in the (lower frequency) communication band. The high frequency information is broadcast in a narrow beam off the front of the beak as was first detected by Kenneth Norris.

In these bands we find that they can produce musical tones or individual clickings or hissing-like noises. Recently we have found that an emotionally upset animal threatens other animals and humans by productions of very large amounts of energy both in the sonic communication band and in the ultrasonic bands. Recently we have had the opportunity of working with an old bull of 450 pounds weight who is so old his teeth have been ground down flat. In terms of his skeleton, he is the most massive animal we have ever seen. When he is irritated, his “barks” have sizable amounts of energy from about 0.5 to at least 300 kilocycles. He is also capable of transmitting in bands between 100 to 300 kilocycles without transmitting anything in the band from 8 kilocycles to 20 kilocycles in a narrow beam straight ahead of his body. When he is upset by the activities of a younger male, they face one another and blast at one another with short barks of this sort, meanwhile “threatening” by opening their mouths.

Since they live immersed in an acoustic world quite strange to us, we have great difficulty in appreciating the full life of these animals with respect to one another and their environment. From birth they are constantly bombarded with signals from the other animals of the same species and by echoes from the environment which they can apparently use very efficiently. Their ultrasonic (to us) emissions are not merely “sonar,” but are interpersonal and even emotional. These animals are not inanimate, cold pieces of sonar apparatus. They use their ultrasounds and their high-pitched sounds interpersonally with fervor in everything they do.

We have demonstrated that the dolphins are quite capable of using vocal outputs as a demand for further rewards or for surcease from punishment. Their ability in the vocal sphere is quite sophisticated. In addition to the ultrasonic matters mentioned above, their sonic performance, when in close contact with man, is astonishing. In 1957 I discovered their ability to produce sounds similar to our speech sounds. During the last two years we have had many opportunities to pursue further observations in this area. This emerging ability seems to be an adaptation to a new environment which includes Man. They quickly discover that they can obtain various kinds of rewards by making what we now call “humanoid emissions.” When they make a sound which sounds similar to a human syllable or word, we express our pleasure by rewarding the animals in various ways. We have been exploring what some of these rewards are in order to elicit further such behavior under better control.

Notice the four large human-like breasts, the two long tubes on top of the head, the beetling brow, the misplaced giant eye, the teeth and the doglike snarling facial expression, the rays in the tail. None of these exist in any known modern whale or dolphin or porpoise. All modern whales, dolphins, and porpoises have two teats, at the genital slit only, which are long and narrow, not hemispherical; the blowhole slits are flush with the skin at the true forehead; the relatively small eyes are at the posterior angle of the jaw; baleen whales have no teeth; large toothed whales have only a few teeth; no “facial” expression is detectable on whales, dolphins, or porpoises; the tale flukes of all species are smooth skinned, not rayed like a fish.]

NAVTAE IN DORSA CETORVM, QVAE INSVLAS PVTANT, anchoras figentes sæpe periclitantur. Hos cetos Trolual sua lingua appellant, Germanice Teüffelwal.

Apparently this is a toothed whale, a sperm whale. The lower body (flukes, penis, lower jaw and moth and teeth) is quite accurate. The ear is fanciful, as is the eye.]

Sperm whale being lanced and blowing blood. (Painting in the collection of the Old Dartmouth Historical Society, New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Mass.; copy through the courtesy of Phillip Purrington, Curator.)]

A sperm whale is attacking a whale boat with his jaws after being provoked by Man. There is no record of an unprovoked attack on a man or a boat or a ship by a whale. (Courtesy of Phillip Purrington, New Bedford.)]

This is an anterior view. The hemispheres are artificially separated for unknown reasons. The optic nerves and tracts are shown. The complex fissuration is obvious. (Courtesy of Dr. Mary A. B. Brazier, UCLA.)]

These drawings were reproduced by H. G. L. Reichenbach in his Anatomia Mammalium in 1845. These are more accurate renditions and show the lateral expansion of these fine brains. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)]

Lateral view. The proportions are excellent, as are the gyri and sulci. Smith gives the species as Delphinus tursio; this probably corresponds to the modern Tursiops truncatus or bottlenose dolphin. This brain closely resembles that of Tursiops shown in photos in reference 7. Langworthy’s 1931 drawings (“Porpoise”) are also similar (Brain, 54, 225, 1931).]

We demonstrated that, like other animals, the monkey, the rat, etc., these animals can be rewarded by stimulating the proper places in their brains. In a recent series of experiments we have been establishing the controls necessary to understanding what brain rewards mean in terms of natural physiology. We have demonstrated quite formally that rubbing the skin of these animals with our hands is a rewarding experience to them; they will seek it vocally and by body gestures and give certain kinds of performance in order to obtain this reward.

Recently we have found that “vocal transactions” are a reward to these animals. (See below for human analogies in the child.) This seems to be one of the basic factors in our being able to elicit humanoid emissions. The vocal transactions are started by a human shouting some words over the water of the tank in which the animal is residing. A single word may be used or many words—it makes little difference. Eventually the animal in the tank will raise his blowhole out of water and make some sort of a humanoid emission or whistle or clicks in a delphinese fashion. If the human immediately replies with some word or words, the animal may immediately respond, the human answers, and a vocal transaction is under way. We have shown that dolphins naturally do this with one another in both their whistle and clicking spheres, and sometimes do it in the barking sphere. How much of this is “instinctual” and how much is not, there is no way of knowing at the present time.

A physical analysis of such vocal transactions shows them to be formally quite as complex as the vocal transactions between human beings. In other words, the dolphin may say one word or a syllable-like emission, or many, one right after the other, as may the humans. If the human says one word, the dolphin may say one, two, three, or four, and if the human says one, two, three, or four, the dolphin may say one. There is no necessary master-slave kind of relationship in the delphinic emissions.

In our early reports we gave examples which were single words which sounded like the words that the human made. This presentation led to misunderstandings among our scientific colleagues. It looked as if the animals were doing a slavish tape-recorder rendition of what we were doing in a fashion similar to that of a parrot or a Mynah bird. All along we have known that the dolphins did not do such a slavish job and were obviously doing a much more complicated series of actions. We are just beginning to appreciate how to analyze and what to analyze in these transactions. As I stated in Man and Dolphin about 10% of these emissions sound like human speech. In other words, the dolphin is “saying” far more than we have transmitted to the scientific community to date. We hesitate to say anything more about this until we begin to understand what is going on in greater detail. We are making progress slowly.

Let me then make an appeal to you—a long appeal to your logical and rational views of man and cetaceans. Here I review the above points in more general terms, and develop a plea for a new science—a new discipline combining the best of science with the best of the humanities.

Several old questions should be revived and asked again with a new attitude, with more modern techniques of investigation and with more persistence. It may take twenty years or more to develop good answers; meanwhile the intellectual life of man will profit in the undertaking. There is something exciting and even at times disturbing in this quest. The bits and pieces may have started before historical times. In each age of man a new fragment was allowed to be recorded and passed on to subsequent generations. Each generation judged and rejudged the evidence from the older sources on the basis of its then current beliefs and on the basis of its new experiences, if any. At times good evidence was attenuated, distorted, and even destroyed in the name of the then current dogma.

Today we have similar problems; our current beliefs blind us, too. Evidence right before the eye can be distorted by the eye of the beholder quite as powerfully as it has been in previous ages of man. We can only hope that we have achieved greater insight and greater objectivity than some of our ancestors. The winds and currents of bias and prejudice blow hard and run deep in the minds of men. In one’s own mind these factors are difficult to see, and when seen, difficult to attenuate and to allow for their influence. If at times I scold my own species, do not take it too personally; I am scolding myself more than you.

You can see by now that I believe that some of the answers to the quest are in our own minds. We must develop, imaginatively and humbly, numbers of alternative hypotheses to expand the testable areas of the intellect and bring to the investigation new mental instruments to test and to collect facts germane to our questions.

To ask about the intelligence of another species, we somehow first ask: how large and well-developed is its brain? Somewhat blindly we link brain size (a biological fact) to intelligence (a behavioral and psychological concept). We know, in the case of our own species, that if the brain fails to develop, intelligence also fails to develop.

How do we judge in our own species that intelligence develops or fails to develop? We work with the child and carefully observe its performances of common tasks and carefully measure its acquisition of speech quantitatively. We measure (among other factors) size of word vocabulary, adequacy of pronunciation, lengths of phrases and sentences, appropriateness of use, levels of abstraction achieved, and the quality of the logical processes used. We also measure speed of grasping new games with novel sets of rules and strategy; games physical and/or games verbal and vocal.

Normal mental growth patterns of human children have been measured extensively in both performance and in vocal speech acquisition. I have taken the liberty of relating these to the normal growth of brain weight of children.

TABLE I Threshold Quantities for Human Acquisition of Speech: Age and Brain Weight

Age Brain Speech stages (first appearances) (months) weight (grams)

2 480 Responds to human voice, cooing, and vocalizes pleasure. 4 580 Vocal play. Eagerness and displeasure expressed vocally. 6 660 Imitates sounds. 9 770 First word. 11 850 Imitates syllables and words. Second word. 13 930 Vocabulary expands rapidly. 17 1,030 Names objects and pictures. 21 1,060 Combines words in speech. 23 1,070 Uses pronouns, understands prepositions, uses phrases and sentences.

Lilly, John C. Man and Dolphin: A Developing Relationship. London: Victor Gollancz, 1962.

Boston Children’s Hospital data from 1,198 records, in Coppoletta, J.M., and Wolbach, S.B., “Body Length and Organ Weights of Infants and Children,” American Journal of Pathology, IX (1933), 55-70.