Scientists attempt dolphin chat

ORLANDO, Fla. – Calvin’s got rhythm – and scientists are excited, since the Disney performer weighs 450 pounds and breathes through a blowhole.

A 12-year-old Atlantic bottlenose dolphin living in the backwaters of Epcot at Walt Disney World, Calvin is being taught a vocal form of communication that involves the cadence of his sounds, something that’s never been done before with animals, his researchers said.

He is one of four dolphins that spend much of the day swimming around Epcot’s Living Seas attraction, then moonlight at Disney as scientific research subjects.

Calvin stars in an experiment that has scientists exploring whether dolphins can communicate with language that doesn’t rely on the pitch, timbre or intensity of vocalizations – the variations that humans most typically use to form words – but on the sounds’ duration and rhythm.

Think Morse code: One long sound could mean one thing. A bunch of quick sounds uttered in staccato might mean another.

In a project overseen by New College of Florida psychology professor Heidi Harley, Disney researchers and trainers are teaching Calvin to associate such rhythms with specific objects.

“It’s interesting that they are capable of being sensitive to and capable of producing rhythms,” said Wendi Fellner, a research associate with Disney. “No other species has shown this sort of flexibility. We want to see if these rhythms can be symbolic for a dolphin, to be used as an artificial communication system.”

The trainer holds up an object. If Calvin responds by vocalizing the right rhythm, he gets a fish. A basketball, for example, is identified with chirp pause chirp pause chirp pause, a rhythm that researchers dubbed the “dribble.” Chirp pause long whistle means the Batman action figure. Long whistle pause long whistle pause long whistle is the watering can.

So far, Calvin has seven rhythms down and two more to go in the first phase.

The next step, Fellner said, is to see if Calvin can find objects when the trainers play back recordings of his rhythmic sounds.

If nothing else, rhythm might give trainers and dolphins another means to communicate, Fellner said.

“The most direct way to find something out about somebody is to ask them,” she said. “So if we can find a way to develop an artificial language, it would be a much more direct way to find out something about them.”