Researchers try to talk with the dolphins at Epcot

[Kadee]

I thought Epcot had a teacher's program...somewhat like "cable in the classroom".....

I'll have to check into that. Thanks, Speck! I already use a lot of the Discovery Channel's resources. Adding Disney to that would be awesome!

 

[WDWFREAK53]

I don't know. After some thought on this trivial point, the word "artificial" has 2 basic connotations: simulated (as in not real), and not natural.

Their communication is real (this is what I got stuck on), but I guess it is artificial in the sense that this is not the way dolphins naturally communicate.

It's the same thing as sign language. A deaf person COMMUNICATES NATURALLY with their hands...but...is it our PRIMARY source of communication? No, speaking in our native tongue is our primary source of communication. Sign language is not an ARTIFICIAL way to communicate.

If, by artificial communication, you are saying that it's a "made up" way to communicate....then every form of communication is artificial. All languages are "made up."

Any form of communication is just "COMMUNICATION"...there is no "real" and "fake" way to communicate. Even if you put a language into a code that only one other person can crack...it's still a form of communication because both subjects in question can understand what the other is trying to communicate to them.

 

[spoodles]

Any form of communication is just "COMMUNICATION"...there is no "real" and "fake" way to communicate. Even if you put a language into a code that only one other person can crack...it's still a form of communication because both subjects in question can understand what the other is trying to communicate to them.

That was my take on it. It goes back to my original point -- the researchers themselves are calling this communication "artificial", which I thought was curious.

 

[MooseImagineer]

I can talk to dolphins...i know their language... :lookaroun

 

[Epcot82Guy]

That was my take on it. It goes back to my original point -- the researchers themselves are calling this communication "artificial", which I thought was curious.

I guess I read it another way. We absolutely have communication going on. However, it is a stimulus and a response. That is fundamentally simple communication. It is NOT language. That's where symbolic understandings are used only; the stimuli are not needed. This is a really minor point, and the concept is really cool. I wish they had more of this type of research going on across future world, but it isn't really practical outside the Seas and the Land.

 

[saltmom1]

Dolphins communicate with each other using clicks and whistles and most forms of toothed cetaceans (whales , dolphins and porpoises) use echolocation to find their food. I think it's interesting what someone said about the dolphins training the people because that sounds like what is going on here. Dolphins can be trained fairly easily to produce a response to a specific stimulus. How do you think those dolphin shows happen ? I would be interested if those doing the research are actually marine biologists who are conducting actual studies or people with a little training in dolphin behavior because the results would be much more legitimate if they were marine biologists.