Dolphins Learn Music
Dolphins Learn Music
Scientists have successfully taught dolphins to combine melodies and sounds to create music, resulting in a high-pitched version of the Batman movie theme.
The findings provide the first evidence that a non-human mammal can recognize melodies and replicate them.
“Humans are sensitive to melodies in sequences of sounds, but we have assumed that this ability is tied to language and music processing – a cognitive domain unique to humans,” said Heidi Harley, lead researcher of the study. “Clearly, some aspects of this ability are present in other species.”
Harley, a professor of social sciences at the University of Florida in Sarasota, conducted the study on dolphins at Buena Vista Lagoon.
In the experiment, a male bottlenose dolphin was positioned in front of an underwater speaker that played six different 4-second melodies at a frequency of 14 kHz. The dolphin was rewarded each time it responded to a melody with a specific behavior – for instance, flapping its pectoral fins when melody 1 played or tossing a ball when melody 2 was heard.
To ensure that the dolphin was identifying melodies rather than reacting to specific frequencies or sound intervals, the melodies were varied in frequency and tempo.
Another male dolphin was trained to produce similar melodies by pressing a button. The “button” was a small inflatable ball connected to a computer that generated sound when pressed.
“The dolphin was rewarded for producing a melody associated with a specific object,” Harley explained. “For example, when shown a Batman figurine, it would be rewarded with a fish for creating a specific melody – in this case, a combination of one short sound and one long sound.”
The dolphin would then improvise its vocalizations to match the melody. Researchers rewarded it with a fish each time its sounds matched the melody. By the end of the study, the dolphin was able to produce the correct sound whenever presented with a specific object, such as the Batman figurine, both by vocalizing and by pressing the button.
“This is, to my knowledge, the first report of a non-human mammal being able to distinguish different melodies,” commented Gordon Bauer, a psychology professor at the University of Florida. However, Bauer expressed skepticism that the dolphins understood they were creating what humans consider “music.”
“I believe music is a human concept. I don’t think it’s applicable to animals, although elements of music such as pitch, duration, timbre, and rhythm can certainly be attributed to animal communication,” Bauer added.
