A bottlenose dolphin at SeaWorld in San Diego. Bottlenose dolphins can call each other by name when they whistle, making them the only animals besides humans known to recognize such identity information, scientists reported on Monday.
Dolphins communicate like humans by calling each other by name, scientists in Fife reported on Monday.
Scientists have long known that dolphins' whistling calls include repeated information thought to be their names, but a new study indicates dolphins recognize these names even when voice cues are removed from the sound.
St Andrews University researchers studying in Sarasota Bay off Florida's west coast Florida discovered bottlenose dolphins used names rather than sound to identify each other.
The three-year-study was funded by the Royal Society of London.
Dr Vincent Janik, of the Sea Mammal Unit at St Andrews University, said they conducted the research on wild dolphins.
"We captured wild dolphins using nets when they came near the shore," he said.
"Then in the shallow water we recoded their whistles before synthesising them on a computer with the caller's voice features removed so that we had a computer voice of a dolphin.
"Then we played it back to the dolphins through an underwater speaker and we found they responded strongly. This showed us that the dolphins know each other's signature whistle instead of just the voice.
"Now we know they have labels for each other like we do."
The findings are published in the US journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
(Agencies)
本周一，苏格兰法夫郡的科学家们公布，海豚和人类一样，通过称呼对方的“名字”进行交流。
科学家们一直认为海豚叫声中包含的一些重复信息是它们的名字，但最新的一项研究表明，即使将声音中的音色因素消除，海豚也能识别出这些名字。
英国圣安德鲁大学的研究人员们在位于佛罗里达西海岸的萨拉索塔湾进行了此项研究，发现宽吻海豚并非通过嗓音，而是通过“名字”（叫声的内容）来识别对方。
伦敦皇家学会为这项长达三年的研究项目提供了资金支持。
圣安德鲁大学海洋哺乳动物研究中心的文森特·雅尼克博士说，他们的研究对象是野生海豚。
他说：“当海豚靠近海岸时，我们就用网子将它们捉住。”
“然后，我们在浅水区中将海豚的叫声重新编码，随即用电脑将叫声合成，并消除叫声的声音特点，这样就得到了每只海豚叫声的电子合成声。”
“接着，我们用一个水下扬声器将电子合成声播放给海豚听，发现它们有强烈的反应。这表明海豚能识别彼此的'署名叫声'，而并不仅仅是嗓音。”
“现在我们知道了海豚像人类一样，拥有自己的‘名字’。”
此项研究结果在美国《国家科学院学报》上发表。
(中国日报网站编译)Vocabulary:
synthesize : to combine and adapt in order to attain a particular effect（合成）