Natures wonders:dolphins understand some language (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, August 14, 2016, 19:26 (3021 days ago) @ David Turell

Research by Louis Herman showed that dolphins can follow some simple sentences and understand hand signals while chimps take much longer to understand some language and do not ever follow hand signals:-http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/13/science/louis-herman-who-talked-with-dolphins-dies-at-86.html?emc=edit_th_20160814&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=60788861&_r=0-"Louis M. Herman, whose seminal research demonstrated that dolphins could understand and respond to language transmitted by sound and visual signals, died on Aug. 3 in Honolulu. He was 86.-"More than two decades of experiments at his Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory in Honolulu proved that dolphins were the cognitive cousins of chimpanzees. By one measure, arguably, the dolphins were more advanced.-***-“'In contrast to the learning process that seems required for chimpanzees, the dolphins at our laboratory proved capable of understanding gestural language instructions given through television images of people the very first time they were exposed to television,...-" Kea had mastered two-word sentences and could respond to questions by pressing paddles that represented yes or no, Dr. Herman told People magazine in 1979.-“'We were working with a very sophisticated animal who was showing comprehension of simple sentences like ‘Fetch the ball' and ‘Touch the ring,'” he said in the interview.-***-"Within three years, he had taught two dozen words in an artificial language to two other bottlenose dolphins, Phoenix and Akeakamai (“lover of wisdom” in Hawaiian). He ultimately demonstrated that dolphins, like bonobos, can process two of the fundamental components of human language: the meaning of words represented by sound or symbol, and the order that governs how they relate in a sentence grammatically.-"Research suggested that the dolphins could understand the abstract meanings of the words, could discriminate left from right and, unlike chimps, could understand when humans gesture by pointing. The dolphins were also found to be able to respond to their environment by both sight and sound by calibrating the sharp clicking sound they emit and operate like sonar to detect the distance, shape, size and solidity of an object.-"Like people, the research found, dolphins can be short-tempered when they are wrong and relish being right (especially when rewarded with a helping of silver smelt).-Comment: It appears the mammal mind developed a capacity for language even before the amazing development in humans. Of course, I see purpose in this.