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Orcas can imitate human speech, research reveals

theguardian.com

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Re: Orcas can imitate human speech, research reveals

#11

Post by mitchtbaum »

How would we type their speech patterns vs ours? Different frequency ranges? Speed? Cadence? ...

Here is the only bit I can remember from cross-human language comparison, not cross-species:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_tempo (searched: different languages speaking rate) (Edit: information density and speech rate)

So my first question is about types of "spoken languages"?

---

from searching, "types of languages" "click languages":

* African languages and linguistic typology - https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcgood/jcgood-AfricaTypology.p...

* Language Classification: History and Method - https://edisciplinas.usp.br/mod/resource/view.php?id=2225588

Anyone have a speech-to-text and POS-tagger yet for dolphins' language morphology/-ies?

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Deciphering the Dolphin Language - http://neuronresearch.net/dolphin/pdf/Dolphin_language.pdf

An assumption can be made that the CNS of the dolphin employs a frame time similar to humans, nominally 30 milliseconds. As a starting point, it is reasonable to assume that a typical phoneme is three to five times longer than 30 ms based on experience with human languages. A complication arises because of the multiple sources of sound within the dolphin’s nasal passages, recalling that the larynx of the dolphin is not in its throat (the passage along which food is ingested). These multiple acoustic sources suggest the dolphin can achieve an equivalent of the unique “throat singing” of the Inuit and Tuva people of Asia. Throat singing is also known as overtone singing. Wikipedia provides a good description of throat singing. In Dolphin, the equivalent is clearly nasal singing. Nasal singing in dolphin may be even more extensive.

As a starting point, the acoustic range of dolphin sounds (other than its forward focused echolocation sounds) potentially useful in communications (language) extends from about 2000 Hz to at least 80,000 Hz (with whistles extending up to about 40,000 Hz). In seeking to understand Dolphinia or Truncates, it makes no sense to restrict our analyses to frequencies that the human can hear. Nor is it rational to limit the dolphin’s language to either a tonal or a stressed structure.

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Interpreting the acoustic pulse emissions of a wild bottlenose dolphin - http://aquaticmammalsjournal.org/share/AquaticMammalsIssueAr...

The study of acoustic signals and the supposed spoken language of the dolphins - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240572231...

I hope some researcher(s) will put out organized videos of dolphins chatting alongside audio spectrograms. Remember the Enigma story, every message had certain words in it and was likely to have certain ones in certain places at certain times from certain senders to certain receivers... Certainly.

Re: Orcas can imitate human speech, research reveals

#12

Post by blondie9x »

Whales are intelligent. They should not be killed by humans who mask the activities as scientific research.

Japan is a great country and a leader on many levels. I speak Japanese. I enjoy Japanese food and culture. The people are very kind and considerate. There are some who are concerned if you stop killing whales you must stop killing fish and other forms of sustenance. This is not the case. The difference is whales are not sustenance and are not something most Japanese would eat or enjoy to eat. Therefore to stop killing whales does not mean we must stop killing the fish we eat to survive.

Cultures evolve and more forward. Japan should move forward and stop killing whales.

Japanese people should not allow tax payer money to finance a new whaling ship. There are more important programs that are much more needed. The subsidies for whaling should end. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/23/japan-to...

Re: Orcas can imitate human speech, research reveals

#13

Post by gadders »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #10
gadders wrote: post #4

Seals can do this too [1]. Worth clicking on the link to hear the strong New England accent that Hoover the Seal had. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_(seal)

I YouTubed this. The speech is surprisingly clear and sounds human.

He was a pretty good mimic. I just watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfqiEGYEQoQ and you have to watch the seal to make sure that is him talking and not the crowd.

Re: Orcas can imitate human speech, research reveals

#14

Post by sandworm101 »

blondie9x wrote: post #12

Whales are intelligent. They should not be killed by humans who mask the activities as scientific research. Japan is a great country and a leader on many levels. I speak Japanese. I enjoy Japanese food and culture. The people are very kind and considerate. There are some who are concerned if you stop killing whales you must stop killing fish and other forms of sustenance. This is not the case. The difference is whale…

And orca are not really whales. They are big dolphins. The name "killer whale" means "killer of whales", whale killer ... blame the french for that swap.

I downloaded a bbc show called "wild wales" expecting an epic doc about the sea. What i got was two guys in a camo tent feeding peanuts to squirrels. Language is hard.

Re: Orcas can imitate human speech, research reveals

#15

Post by ickwabe »

blondie9x wrote: post #12

Whales are intelligent. They should not be killed by humans who mask the activities as scientific research. Japan is a great country and a leader on many levels. I speak Japanese. I enjoy Japanese food and culture. The people are very kind and considerate. There are some who are concerned if you stop killing whales you must stop killing fish and other forms of sustenance. This is not the case. The difference is whale…

Agreed. As should Norway and Iceland.

Re: Orcas can imitate human speech, research reveals

#17

Post by sethbannon »

Listening to these remarkable recordings, I can't help but think that as time goes on, more and more of the artificial mental barriers we've built between us and non-human animals will fall. I hope with more research humanity stops seeing non-human animals as resources to be exploited but rather as sentient beings to be respected.

Re: Orcas can imitate human speech, research reveals

#19

Post by pbhjpbhj »

sethbannon wrote: post #17

Listening to these remarkable recordings, I can't help but think that as time goes on, more and more of the artificial mental barriers we've built between us and non-human animals will fall. I hope with more research humanity stops seeing non-human animals as resources to be exploited but rather as sentient beings to be respected.

Humans presumably are seen as sentient yet [the majority of us?] are being exploited in one way or another: Capitalism has no inbuilt concept of respect.

If you meant not exploited for food, that is obviously different. I'm not aware of any humans that do that anymore.

Now tell me how you judge sentience?

Re: Orcas can imitate human speech, research reveals

#20

Post by cetalingua »

mitchtbaum wrote: post #11

How would we type their speech patterns vs ours? Different frequency ranges? Speed? Cadence? ... Here is the only bit I can remember from cross-human language comparison, not cross-species: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_tempo (searched: different languages speaking rate) (Edit: information density and speech rate) So my first question is about types of "spoken languages"? --- from searching, "types of language…

The role of larynx in cetacean sound production is still debated, but we do know that they posses at least 2 sound generating mechanisms that could work independently and simultaneously. It appears that right side phonic lip is involved in echolocation and pulsed sounds, the right one is involved in whistling. Two (maybe even 3, if larynx is indeed invoved too) sound producing mechanisms make their communication even more complex, since it greatly increases the sound combinations probabilities.

Many researchers have already done that, i.e. using video and audio for sound analysis, and here we are,60+ years later, still do not know the function of even a single call, apart, of course, from signature whistles and echolocation. This is a non-human communication system, 25 mln years in the making by creatures who rely on sounds in ways humans never will.

When we study cetaceans, we struggle to determine who produces the sound, who responds, even tagged animals are problematic, because the sound could be made by someone next to them. In large pelagic pods, it is a cacophony, they chat all the time and never shut up. It appears that at least in dolphins, whistles could be more of a long distance signals, but pulsed ones, like burst pulses, are more of a short distance signals, for those who are close by.

But make no mistake, some information is being transmitted, we know that. The Bastian experiment with all its flaws was first to demonstrate it,and it has been replicated too. Some researchers are not entirely convinced, but it is definitely a very interesting area to explore.

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