The problem with studying dolphin communication is being able to study them for any great length of time out in the wild, which requires patience and money. This is where Denise Herzing comes in. She is based at the Wild Dolphin Project in Florida, and has spent much of her time working with the same pod of wild dolphins for the past 27 years, documenting the complexity of their communication, acoustic signals and behavior over that time period.
"We know them individually, we know their personalities, we know their communication signals and we already do things together that seem to be of interest [to them]," she says. "What we're now trying to do is develop an interface that takes advantage of those small windows where we have their attention and they want to interact with us."
... a smart phone-sized gizmo that can I.D a dolphin whistle in real time. It's worn around the neck of a diver and connected up to a pair of hydrophones and a one-handed keyboard called a 'twiddler'.
By agreeing with the dolphins on a common artificial language, neatly side-stepping the problem of translation, it is hoped that C.H.A.T. will enable humans and dolphins to talk in real time. For instance, dolphins will be able to request toys such as a ball or a hoop from humans, and vice versa. ...
... The plan is to test the device this year, before getting it out into the wild in 2012.
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