Flipper's pals in the wild inspire Case philosopher
Waller observes dolphins for search of language, animal communication
November 3, 2005 | For more information: Susan Griffith 216-368-1004
Bottlenose dolphins like the gregariously social Flipper of television fame have sparked human imaginations regarding animal communication, and researchers like Case Western Reserve University's philosopher Sara Waller are tuning in to their sounds and actions to try to find a new language.
At 4 a.m. on cold and damp mornings, Waller has perched on a 900-foot cliff, a shear drop-off to Black's Beach in southern California, where she listens via a hydrophone to the clicks and whistles that form the chatter of a pod of dolphins as they come to this popular feeding ground.
Meanwhile a video camera rolls to capture the mammals' behavior as they eat.
Up close to her research subjects, Waller also has gone into the water in kayaks and boats, as well as underwater via sound equipment, in her search to understand dolphin talk.
In upcoming months, the new assistant professor in the department of philosophy will engage Case undergraduates in her research to correlate the video images with the sound to decipher and discover possible language and words that dolphins, Tursiops truncata from the cetacean marine family, use in the wild to communicate with each other. (Students interested in being interns for the project should contact her at sara.waller@case.edu.)
While an undergraduate student at University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, and later as a graduate student at Loyola University Chicago, Waller began to develop her interest in the psychology of human language and how the mind works. This interest in language eventually led to the research in dolphin communication. She realized questions she had about the mind and how it works were those of a philosopher, but that psychology and mammology could bring information important for philosophical work.
If one wonders how dolphin chatter has a connection to philosophy, Waller said that interpreting how dolphins communicate can eventually lead to an understanding of language and communications in different animal species.
"I want to look at some possible applications for theories of linguistic meaningfulness in cases of radical translation," Waller said.
She explained that radical translation cases "are situations in which we suspect another group of beings is using a language" and no translators exist to interpret what is being heard or communicated.
"The language must be learned from scratch, using observations and interaction as a guide to our level of comprehension of the meanings behind their vocalizations and behaviors," she said.
She added that "dolphins are great vocalizers, but we don't know much about what the vocalizations mean."
While most radical translation situations take place between groups of humans, Waller decided to take "it a step further into the animal realm to find answers to such questions as: What makes language meaning-bearing? How can we determine when communications take place?"
"In philosophy, radical translation is only discussed theoretically," said Waller. "The questions I am raising as a philosopher involve extending the notion of radical translation to studies in cognitive ethology."
Examples such as Koko, the gorilla that has been taught sign language, or Alex the Parrot, who can answer questions asked him in English, raise questions, Waller said, if Koko's trainer has bridged more than a language barrier or if Alex the Parrot lives in the same type of world that humans live in or does the parrot understand the world differently than humans do.
Through the language studies of dolphins, she is attempting to answer the question of whether dolphins understand the world the same or different from humans.
This research has the potential to lead to answering such large and broad questions as whom we are as humans and our place in the world, Waller said.
"Dolphin research gives us a window into trying to answer that question about the limits of the human imagination," she said.
What we know known about dolphins
The leap between humans and dolphins may not be so great. Waller notes that both mammals' brains are almost equal in proportional size.
While humans have constructed myths about the lovability and kindness of dolphins, Waller said the behavior of these mammals can also be quite violent, competitive and even bullish.
Dolphins congregate in pods. They can organize their group to encircle a school of fish for feeding. They also are known to baby-sit other mothers' calves while the mother hunts for food. Like humans, dolphins spend a long time with their mothers-as long as 11 years-and like humans who stop and greet each other on the street, north- and south-bound pods of dolphins will stop and appear to mix and mingle socially when crossing ocean paths and then continue on their way.
Similar to human cultural differences in different parts of the world, the males of the Californian bottlenose dolphins pair off as mates for life, while their Australian counterparts form lifelong bonds in groups of threes.
With Eric Howarth, a researcher at Florida State University's Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., Waller will continue to explore other differences in dolphin behavior off the Florida coast. These dolphins live at the same approximate latitude as the Californian pods.
Prior research has found dolphins have one high pitched yelp that is widely recognized as a mating call and also the animals increase their whistles and clicks by as much as 80 percent when in the presence of food. The marine animal is also a great imitator of other dolphin sounds, which complicates Waller's work.
What all those clicks and whistles mean is what Waller, who is interested in language formation, is finding out.
Much of the dolphin language research has been done on animals in captivity, but to truly understand dolphins, a researcher needs to observe them in the wild, explains Waller.
Her research has support from the National Endowment of the Humanities for her work on "Diogenes Dolphins" regarding human and animal mind science.
At Case, Waller also will teach a number of classes, including introduction to philosophy, philosophy of the mind and a SAGES first seminar class on the symbolic world.
About Case Western Reserve University
Case is among the nation's leading research institutions. Founded in 1826
and shaped by the unique merger of the Case Institute of Technology and Western
Reserve University, Case is distinguished by its strengths in education, research,
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