![]() ![]() It's a major discovery, agrees Rindy Anderson, a behavioral ecologist at Florida Atlantic University who was not involved with the research. ( See beautiful photos of animal mothers and their babies. Now, Sayigh’s new study, based on three decades of data in Florida, reveals common bottlenose dolphins use motherese-one of the first times it’s been documented in a species other than humans. Only a handful of other species have been shown to change their calls when addressing young, including zebra finches, rhesus macaques, and squirrel monkeys. “We’re not changing the words that we’re saying, we’re changing the way that we’re saying them,” says Laela Sayigh, a marine biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Researchers have dubbed this “motherese,” or, more formally, “infant-directed speech.” Sentences become shorter, sounds are exaggerated, and the overall pattern of speech is more singsong and musical. "It would make sense if there are similar adaptations in bottlenose dolphins - a long-lived, highly acoustic species," a behavioural ecologist at Denmark's Aarhus University and study co-author, Frants Jensen, said.The sight of chubby baby cheeks is often enough to transform even the most committed curmudgeon into a babbling softie. And Zebra finches elevate their pitch and slow down their songs to address chicks, perhaps making it easier to learn birdsong.įor the dolphin study, the researchers focused solely on the signature call, so they do not know if dolphins also use baby talk for other exchanges - or whether it helps their offspring learn to "talk" as it seems to do with humans. Research dating back to the 1980s suggests human infants may pay more attention to speech with a greater pitch range.įemale rhesus monkeys may alter their calls to attract and hold offspring's attention. Why people, dolphins or other creatures use baby talk is not certain, but scientists believe it may help offspring learn to pronounce novel sounds. Fathers do not play a prolonged role in parenting. Dolphin calves stay with their mothers for an average of three years in Sarasota. That included years when they had calves and when they did not. Over more than three decades, scientists placed special microphones multiple times on the same wild dolphin mothers in Florida's Sarasota Bay to record their signature whistles. "That was true for every one of the mums in the study, all 19 of them," said co-author and biologist Peter Tyack from the University of St Andrews. ![]() When directing the signal to their calves, the mother's whistle pitch is higher and her pitch range is greater than usual, according to the study published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ![]() ![]() They're periodically saying, 'I'm here, I'm here,'" study co-author Laela Sayigh, a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution marine biologist, said. "They use these whistles to keep track of each other. The dolphin signature whistle is a unique and important signal - akin to calling out their own name. Researchers recorded the signature whistles of 19 mother dolphins in Florida, when accompanied by their young offspring and when swimming alone or with other adults. The study, published on Monday, found that female bottlenose dolphins change their tone when addressing their calves. ![]()
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