27 Jun 2023 at 23:26
Dolphins, like humans, use a high-pitched voice to communicate with their newborn cubs, research shows.
Biologists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US state of Massachusetts have spent more than thirty years studying the bottlenose dolphin, the most famous dolphin species. They studied 19 mother dolphins living in the wild in Florida.
Their research shows that the female bottlenose dolphins change their tone when they whistle at their calves. They used a kind of baby talk similar to how people sometimes speak to their children.
The researchers compared the female bottlenose dolphins’ whistles when they swam with their young to their whistles when they were alone and when they swam with other adult dolphins.
Higher pitch could help boy use sounds
When the mother dolphin’s sound is directed toward her calf, the pitch of the whistle is higher and her tonal range is also wider than normal. “This applies to all nineteen dolphins we tracked,” says researcher Peter Tyack The Guardian.
To measure the different whistles, the researchers attached special microphones to the nineteen dolphins. They followed the mammals when they had and when they did not have calves.
Why humans, dolphins and other animals speak to their babies in a higher pitch is not entirely clear. Scientists believe it may help little ones learn to use new sounds. In humans, baby talk could contribute to language learning.
2023-06-27 21:26:29
#Dolphins #talk #young #baby #voice #humans #Animals
