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1:14

Oh, hey, it's the extra power bank

1:16

you always forget to charge and bring with you, Alleyward.

1:18

And this is an ologies that you did not know

1:21

you were waiting for. Oh, dolphins, no

1:23

one's ready for this. No one is. Y'all

1:25

know we've had a few two-parters

1:27

recently and I just can't help it. We've

1:30

done it again. This conversation was just

1:32

too perfect and too long not to break

1:34

up because honestly, it's one that

1:36

you need to savor. I legit

1:38

like this ologist more than I'm ever gonna like

1:40

myself. And I'm so thrilled to introduce

1:43

them to you. They got

1:44

their PhD from the School of Psychology

1:46

at Trinity College, Dublin in Dublin, Ireland.

1:49

They're currently an adjunct professor at

1:51

St. Francis Xavier University and

1:54

a senior research associate with the Dolphin

1:56

Communication Project. Also co-editor

1:59

at one.

1:59

of the journal Aquatic Mammals, so

2:02

they know their stuff. They also wrote the book on

2:04

dolphin cognition called Are Dolphins

2:06

Really Smart? as well as the book 22

2:09

Fantastical Facts About Dolphins.

2:11

And they just came out with another book on animal cognition

2:14

titled If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal,

2:17

What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human

2:19

Stupidity. And this ologist

2:22

sat down in Nova Scotia

2:25

for a spirited and no

2:28

hyperbole, a thrilling discussion

2:30

on everything from dolphins on acid

2:33

to why hustler broke dolphins

2:35

biggest scientific study news. But

2:38

before we do, a quick thanks to all the patrons at patreon.com

2:40

for keeping the show going and submitting great questions.

2:43

You too can join for as little as a dollar

2:45

a month. Thank you also to everyone

2:47

for rating and subscribing and reviewing,

2:50

which keeps us up in the charts. This week

2:52

we were number one in science, which

2:54

really means the world to me. And I read

2:56

all the reviews and I prove it with a piping hot

2:58

one. This week

2:59

is from Aditron who wrote, "'Allie is

3:02

basically your college roommate. "'She throws

3:04

great parties with interesting people "'and you definitely

3:06

wouldn't have passed your bio classes "'without her tutelage.

3:09

"'She definitely eats all your snacks though.' "'Aditron

3:12

nailed it." Also, if you hear this before April 20th, Ologies

3:15

is up for a few Webby Awards, including for best

3:17

hosts. And my competition is like some

3:19

loser named John Stewart and the link to vote

3:21

is in the show notes. But I'm keeping my expectations

3:24

low. Okay, dolphins. First

3:26

off, the term dolphinology comes from

3:28

the Greek, meaning fish

3:29

with a womb. So process

3:32

that. Also in French, dauphine

3:35

means prince. And I spent way too

3:37

long pouring through some old papers about

3:39

European noblemen. But essentially the

3:42

French called their princes dolphins because of some

3:44

count of Vienna who called his son that as

3:46

a nickname in the year 1110. Despite

3:50

Vienna being 500 kilometers away from the

3:52

Mediterranean, but yes, there are dolphins in the Mediterranean.

3:55

Anyway, it's time. Just a quick heads

3:57

up up top. There is a brief mention of

3:59

suicide in the sub.

3:59

just letting you know. Let's get into this

4:02

episode. Let's slide our slippery little

4:04

butts into these fascinating waters for dolphin

4:06

brain size, language, squeaks,

4:09

calls, why they follow boats, pink

4:11

dolphins, the difference between a whale and

4:13

a porpoise in a dolphin, dolphins in the

4:15

deep, dolphins in captivity, the

4:18

word captivity, the godfather

4:20

of dolphin mystique, why NASA

4:23

invested in dolphin research and

4:25

love, physical love between a dolphin and its

4:27

keeper. There's so much more with researcher,

4:29

author, and dolphinologist,

4:32

Dr. Justin Gregg.

4:35

["The first,

4:56

let's address the ology. Setology,

4:59

what would the ology be for a dolphin?" I

5:01

don't know if there's a word specific to dolphins,

5:04

dolphinologist or that

5:06

maybe, a setologist is a thing,

5:08

but that's also like whales. Yeah, that's all

5:10

kinds of stuff, right? Yeah, whales and

5:12

dolphins and porpoises. Okay. So I

5:15

don't know as much about like baleen whales

5:17

or even toothed whales. Like I'm just sort of the dolphin-y

5:19

guy.

5:20

When you say that you're the dolphin guy,

5:23

I mean, so exciting. How

5:25

many dolphin people are there who

5:28

are in the community of dolphin researchers? Because I feel

5:30

like there's probably a lot of people that are like, I need to know what's

5:32

going on with dolphins as a job. There are

5:34

a lot, and they come from completely different

5:37

fields. There are a lot of psychologists, zoologists,

5:39

there's biologists, anatomy people, like

5:42

they're coming at it from so many different

5:44

angles. So like, it's even hard

5:46

to say how many there are. Like if you go to a conference

5:48

on marine mammology, there'll be like hundreds and hundreds

5:50

of dolphin people, but they're not even

5:52

in the same domain. They're

5:55

like, this one guy knows everything about like hydrodynamics.

5:58

And then I'm there, I'm like, I do dolphin.

5:59

squeaks or whatever and

6:02

like we're not on the same planet. So

6:04

like I do need to know basic like

6:06

dolphin anatomy stuff, right?

6:07

Why do you think dolphins are

6:09

so interesting to humans? Is it because

6:12

they have giant huge brains?

6:14

That is the

6:15

greatest question. I mean people

6:17

will look at like the history. They'll be like okay the Greeks

6:20

had a thing with dolphins. They thought of them as friendly

6:22

and in Western Europe yeah there's kind of this weird

6:24

mythos around dolphins being important

6:27

to our cultures. But

6:29

the reason that you and I know a lot about dolphins

6:32

and feel like they're a big deal is really

6:34

because of what happened in the 1960s

6:38

with the crazy pants experiments with

6:40

dolphins that led to all of

6:42

like everything we're gonna talk about that's flim flam

6:44

I swear came out of like the early

6:46

1960s. It's still floating around

6:49

after like 70 years.

6:50

Very groovy. What happened

6:52

in the 1960s? Was there some sort of

6:55

post atomic

6:57

space race LSD?

7:01

Now we have to figure out everything about dolphins, everyone's

7:04

horny. What was going on? It

7:06

was like

7:07

specifically one person which

7:09

is John Cunningham Lilly, John

7:12

C. And he

7:14

like his story explains

7:17

everything and he is like I do

7:19

not want to disparage him because he is the reason that

7:21

most of us dolphin nerds got into it because

7:23

a lot of his ideas became things that we then

7:25

wanted to learn about and address. But

7:27

also like he went totally off the rails

7:30

with his speculation which is why there's

7:32

so much crazy stuff happening. How

7:34

did

7:34

you find out about that research?

7:37

Let's get into how you got

7:39

into it and then you're gonna take me

7:42

back and I'm gonna hear about this Lily pants person because

7:44

I'm fascinated. It's an amazing story.

7:46

I love telling it. Yes. So me. Okay. So

7:48

I I want to do undergrad

7:50

stuff and I didn't know what I

7:53

wanted to do. I'm one of those people who entered it was like I'll

7:55

take the first two years to figure myself out. And

7:57

there's two things I knew one I sucked at science.

9:56

What

10:00

do I want to do with my life? I want to be studying

10:02

that animal that I loved as a kid. And

10:05

so I'm like, how do I make that happen?

10:07

Because I have a degree in linguistics. That's

10:09

a human thing. And I'm like, you know what? I

10:11

can study dolphin communication. I can study

10:13

the evolution of language by

10:16

looking at another species that's famous

10:18

for being good at communicating. And so I went to

10:20

the public library and I just read a ton of books on

10:22

biology and things I didn't know about and

10:25

got good enough to apply for a graduate

10:28

program and got in and then boom, there you go.

10:31

Wow. So that's what happened to me. And how

10:33

much did you have to catch up

10:36

on the evolution of

10:38

cytology and things like that? How many basics

10:41

did you need to know biologically to understand

10:43

what they were doing with their brains

10:46

and communication? A lot.

10:47

I ended up like doing a lot of reading and

10:49

then while I was doing my master's into the PhD, just

10:51

taking a ton of classes in like zoology,

10:53

biology, anatomy, and like psychology,

10:56

just to have a basic grasp of what brains

10:58

do. Because again, I studied nothing

11:00

of the sort. I had like a folk and square dancing

11:02

class as an undergrad. I didn't know what I was doing.

11:05

But I was motivated and passionate

11:07

because I'm like, I'm not going to work at this terrible

11:09

job. I'm not counting zippers.

11:11

I'm not counting lures. I'm studying dolphins. And

11:14

so that did it. Wow.

11:16

Okay. The big question.

11:18

Do dolphins talk? What is

11:20

talking and are they doing it?

11:23

The problem is, as always, what does

11:25

talk mean? What does language mean? So

11:27

there's like in late, like if we're just chatting and

11:29

we talk about, oh, dolphin language, what's that like?

11:32

You're sort of using it to mean like their communication

11:34

system and that's okay. But if you,

11:36

if I put on my science guy hat and I'm like,

11:38

no, that is not language. Language

11:41

has a very specific definition of what it's doing

11:44

and how it functions structurally. And

11:46

that is not something that even

11:48

the best symbol using species,

11:50

like animals like the great apes, dolphins

11:52

that we can train to use symbols, they aren't

11:55

doing like full fledged language or even

11:57

in their own communication systems, they're not

11:59

talking about.

11:59

as it were, the same kinds of

12:02

things that we are. And I think

12:03

the best way to understand why it's not

12:05

is that if you look at animal communication

12:08

systems, what is it that they do communicate

12:10

about? It's like a handful of things. They

12:12

say like,

12:13

there's danger or come mate

12:16

with me, or there's food.

12:18

And that's kind of it. Whereas you and I can

12:20

talk about like how terrible it is to count

12:23

fishing lures. Like anything

12:25

that we can conceive of, we can discuss

12:27

that it's open-ended in terms of like the

12:29

concepts we can discuss. And animals just

12:32

don't, even though they have structurally complex

12:34

systems, they don't talk about lots of things.

12:37

So there's a difference between communication

12:40

and language. Communication just relates

12:42

any information that can be a grunt

12:45

or a look or a scream. And we have a whole

12:47

episode just on screaming. I'll

12:49

link in the show notes. But language on

12:51

the other hand, or tongue can be

12:53

verbal, it can be signed, it can be written,

12:56

but it has to have a system of

12:58

vocabulary and of grammar.

13:01

And I will also link the phonology episodes

13:03

on human linguistics. But getting back to

13:06

the subject at hand,

13:07

or a flipper, dolphinology. Okay,

13:10

when you were learning about dolphin communication

13:12

and dolphins, and you were taking zoology and biology and all

13:15

of these things, how much do

13:17

they talk about this little guy? Not

13:19

too terribly much. Okay. Because I think that

13:21

he's sort of a taboo character in that.

13:24

So like, if you're a serious dolphin

13:26

scientist person, you will know about him and his

13:29

influence on the field, but you're not referencing like

13:31

his writing. Okay, so we didn't talk about

13:33

him much, you sort of have to learn about him through

13:35

the lore of

13:37

people who don't study dolphins coming and asking you

13:39

like, Hey, is it true that dolphins are psychic

13:41

or whatever? And you're like, What? Then you

13:44

have to go be like, Where are you getting

13:46

this from? And the answer is always John Lilly.

13:48

Oh my god, can you give me a rundown

13:50

on what who he was and why he made

13:54

dolphins so dolphony

13:56

in our culture. Yes. So storytime.

13:59

He was a medical doctor. He studied

14:02

neuro stuff. There

14:04

was one day his friend invited him

14:06

down to the beach where there was a dolphin

14:08

or a pilot whale, I think, that had died. He's

14:11

like, you got to check out this animal's brain.

14:13

I cracked open the skull, looked at the brain, and

14:15

they were like, whoa, it's big. That

14:18

was strangely the first time anyone

14:20

had really figured this out because this

14:23

is in the late 40s. Okay, wow. Before

14:25

then, dolphins were like weird fish.

14:27

They're fish that breathe through a hole

14:29

in the top and then they give live birth. Okay,

14:32

so they're a mammal. We knew that. But

14:34

there were no ideas about them being smart.

14:36

This didn't exist until he looked at

14:38

the brain and was like, it's big. Then

14:41

he's like, okay, so this ... He used to do vivisections.

14:44

He'd put electrodes into the brains of monkeys

14:46

and great apes and stimulate

14:48

the brain and see what the brain was doing. This was early

14:51

days. He's like, I'm going to do that

14:54

to dolphins. Okay.

14:56

Okay. Okay. He

14:59

went to a lab in Florida, got

15:01

access to a bunch of dolphins and anesthetized

15:03

them and tried to stimulate their brain. The problem

15:06

is when you anesthetize a dolphin,

15:08

it dies. Because

15:10

they're conscious breathers. If they go to sleep,

15:13

they stop breathing. He killed a ton of dolphins

15:15

and then he finally figured out how to

15:17

not kill them and stimulate their brains. What

15:21

he noticed was that they made a lot

15:23

of noise. They made a lot of clicky

15:25

sounds. Sometimes it sounded like they were

15:27

trying to imitate

15:28

his speech. That

15:37

was the eureka moment. He's like, they're trying

15:39

to speak English.

15:41

Wow. He wrote

15:43

a book about those early experiments, Man

15:45

and Dolphin, and he was sure because

15:48

of the size of their brain and the fact that they could

15:50

imitate his speech or were trying to that

15:53

dolphins had a language. Dolphins were as smart

15:55

or smarter than humans because their brains are larger than

15:57

ours. He just had all these big,

15:59

great. ideas about, you know, someday

16:02

in the future, like we'll have the dolphins at the United

16:04

Nations table and they'll be there with us talking

16:06

about it. So, and then the money started coming

16:08

in. Then

16:11

like NASA

16:13

was interested, right? Cause they're like,

16:15

the government was like, Oh, there

16:17

you might be that smart. Here's tons

16:19

of money. Go learn to talk to

16:22

the dolphins. Oh boy. And so he

16:24

started it a, oh my, I'm just going to go, this is a monologue

16:26

and

16:26

a half. I love it. I love it. And I started a lab

16:29

in St. Thomas where he was studying

16:31

dolphins to communicate with them. Famously,

16:34

there was a woman named Margaret Howe,

16:36

who was part of his research group and she lived in

16:38

a house, a two story house

16:40

flooded with water that a

16:42

single dolphin lived in named Peter. No. And

16:45

she lived in the house with Peter

16:47

to teach him English. Wait. This

16:49

is a lot. I know. No, no, no, no. It's not even enough

16:52

is what it is. This

16:54

gets so much weirder. Hang tight. Okay.

16:57

One question. Do you think that he, that the

16:59

dolphin at any point was trying to speak

17:01

human to be like, can you

17:02

please not? No. Okay.

17:05

Just checking. Yeah, I would say not the

17:07

case. No. However, when, when

17:09

the dolphin in with Margaret got in the pool,

17:11

she was actively teaching it to imitate her and it was

17:14

trying to imitate her because they're very good mimics

17:16

vocally, but it sounded like

17:18

you can listen to the recordings. It sounds ridiculous.

17:21

Like they're, they're not structurally

17:23

capable of making human like sounds.

17:28

Hello. Hello.

17:36

So she spent like six months yelling

17:39

numbers and words at this dolphin and trying to

17:41

get it to imitate her speech and it didn't

17:43

work. Was she in scuba gear? How was

17:46

she going up and down these, up and down this two

17:48

story watertight house? I guess it was like

17:50

a weird elevator thing that would

17:51

bring her up and down and like Her desk was like

17:53

elevated from the ceiling and she would just sort of sit there

17:56

and like put her feet in the water and the dolphin

17:58

would come up to her.

17:59

dolphin or am was situated on a caribbean

18:02

island of st thomas and margaret

18:04

love it side note had heard about

18:06

the secret lab while she was living

18:08

on the island she drove to the lab where

18:10

she encountered the lead scientist on the

18:12

project outside smoking a segue and

18:15

she was like hey i'm no scientist

18:17

but can i science with your dolphins and they were

18:19

like such moxie get in tank

18:22

and so she turned out to be a

18:24

really gifted and astute animal

18:26

observer so when she pointed

18:28

out that going home

18:29

and sleeping in a dry bed

18:32

with your partner meant losing

18:34

sixteen hours of potential observation

18:37

and data every day there were like

18:39

good point a waterproof the labs

18:41

upper floors to she moved in

18:44

for a total of six months and the

18:46

photos i saw looked kind of like an indoor

18:48

swimming pool but just wall to wall

18:50

and usually with margaret love it with a golden

18:53

tan and a dark pixie cut and full

18:55

lips dangling her feet in the water

18:57

or bent over a bucket of fish

18:59

eyes

18:59

trained on a dolphin wow

19:02

okay up there she slapped in

19:04

the house with peter the dolphin

19:06

now when i hear the words

19:08

pewter the dolphin something in

19:10

my brain says alley you've

19:13

read about this and it's horny yeah

19:15

am i wrong you not wrong look how

19:17

are you are getting into the part

19:19

of the story where it goes off the rails yeah

19:23

so famously i

19:25

mean cause this was disappeared and like a hostile

19:28

the first people to break the story was hustler

19:30

and like the seventies know the up and

19:33

my guy who made it became a famous or but

19:35

so peter the dolphin was a young dolphin a young male

19:37

dolphin taken from his social group

19:40

or normally he'd be hanging around with a bunch of other

19:42

dolphins right at doing normal

19:44

dolphin socio sexual stuff so

19:46

he and mom sure we're going to talk a lot about

19:48

this in

19:49

the future he would whip

19:51

that penis out because dolphins can do

19:53

that all the time and sort of be rubbing it on

19:56

her oh and so one of the things

19:58

she would do to calm him down to get him

21:59

to a lot of animals. So that's not out

22:02

of the question, but whether or not it was intentional.

22:05

I don't think so. Peter

22:07

the Dolphin, as well as a few others at

22:09

the Dolphinarium, had been captured

22:11

in the wild previously and used

22:14

in the TV show Flipper. And another

22:16

actress and dolphin from Flipper, dolphin

22:18

named Kathy, apparently ended her

22:20

own life after the show wrapped, just

22:23

one day failing to breathe

22:25

in the arms of her trainer. And another captive

22:28

orca died of self-inflicted blunt

22:30

force trauma, butting into a wall

22:33

headfirst repeatedly. But animal

22:35

behaviorists are still split

22:37

on cetaceans intentions

22:39

in self-harm. And one not

22:41

so fun fact, but suicideology

22:44

is a legit field in mental health care

22:47

and in research. And I have a future

22:49

episode on that planned. But overall,

22:51

those all of us have moved towards saying died

22:54

by suicide rather than commit, since the

22:56

language of commit implies an act of wrongdoing

22:58

or something to be judged. But yes, stay

23:00

tuned for that episode. What about the

23:03

notion of dolphins as people? Did

23:05

these experiments pave the way

23:07

for that? Yes, because the claims were quite

23:10

strong in that their intelligence levels are the same

23:12

or more sophisticated than us. And

23:14

that bleeds straight into an argument of well, if they're super, super

23:16

smart, then they should be allotted

23:19

the same sort of moral consideration as

23:22

other humans. And so, yeah,

23:25

so they entered into the lore as

23:27

a creature that deserves the rights

23:29

along those lines. But, but, but, but now we

23:31

get into the modern day and we talk about personhood

23:34

in the legal sense, which a lot

23:36

of folks are doing when it comes to cognition.

23:39

And that's a different that's a different kind of legal question

23:41

where you could say like an elephant or a chimpanzee

23:44

or a dolphin has enough sophisticated

23:46

cognitive function to be considered not

23:49

a thing, but, but

23:50

a person just like McDonald's is a person

23:53

because corporations have personhood. So

23:55

why not a dolphin, which isn't so crazy.

23:58

Yeah. And while corporations

23:59

have enjoyed some of the legal rights

24:02

of people since the 1918 court

24:04

case involving Dartmouth and England,

24:07

the courts are still on the fence about

24:09

captive animals. They're kind of arguing what exactly

24:12

habeas corpus or the protection

24:14

against unlawful detention and the right

24:16

to bodily autonomy really means

24:18

for different species. Do you, and

24:21

I'm not sure exactly like what rights personhood

24:23

allows,

24:24

because there are still

24:27

scientific experiments happening with dolphins, correct,

24:29

without their consent as well

24:31

as abduction from the wild, but

24:34

where does the line between respecting

24:37

the intelligence and the cognition of a dolphin versus

24:39

wanting to know more about that cognition for

24:41

the benefit of humanity? Where

24:44

ethically do scientists draw that line? That

24:46

is a great question

24:47

and there is no

24:49

answer because the folks who are advocating are fighting

24:51

for personhood to be applied,

24:54

but that doesn't necessarily give an animal in

24:56

this case exactly the same rights as

24:58

a full-fledged adult human. Because if you think

25:00

of children, children are humans,

25:02

they have personhood as well, but we're allowed

25:05

to do things to kids that you can't

25:07

do an adult. I could take my toddler and put her

25:09

in the car and strap her down against

25:11

her will. She's like, I don't want this. I'm like, you have to put

25:13

on a seat belt. That's allowed, but

25:16

I could not do that to you if

25:17

you're yelling at me not to put you in the

25:19

back seat. So

25:22

even within our own species, there's gradients about

25:24

what is and what isn't allowed based on the

25:26

situation. So certainly that would apply to,

25:28

you know, you would have justifications for doing some things

25:30

to animals and not others if they had personhood.

25:33

Well, talking about their personhood

25:36

and their brains and all of this, how did

25:38

dolphins, which from what I understand

25:41

evolved out of the ocean

25:44

onto the land became deer-like

25:46

creatures and then were like, fuck this, went back

25:48

to the ocean. How

25:50

did their brains get so

25:53

big and squishy along the way? That is

25:55

the million dollar question. They have

25:58

very large brains. brains

26:00

and that they have a lot of like cerebral cortex that's

26:02

all folded up just like humans, more folds

26:05

than humans even. And

26:07

the question is well why? Why do they need

26:09

it? And there are a lot of competing hypotheses

26:11

and no answers. Some major hypotheses

26:14

are it's diet related. Like they

26:16

are omnivores or not omnivores but they

26:19

are hunting and looking for food

26:21

in the same way like a crow might do or like

26:23

a human and so they need

26:25

because of the ecological

26:28

needs of being a smart hunter their

26:30

brains got big. That's potentially an

26:32

answer but the

26:34

the more interesting answer is

26:36

that it's for social navigation

26:39

because dolphins live in exceedingly complicated

26:41

social groups and the need

26:44

to navigate those social groups necessitates

26:46

a lot of brainpower to keep track of like who

26:48

your friends and enemies are. Like who do you hate?

26:51

Who helped you last year? I'm

26:52

not gonna make a big deal at my party but she

26:54

is so rude. And so that

26:57

is the leading hypothesis which is probably still

26:59

wrong but it's a real good one. Mm-hmm.

27:01

And I'm sure there's a spectrum of well-being

27:03

for marine mammals that are human-kept.

27:06

On one end being well cared for

27:08

or research animals that are minimally

27:10

disturbed in larger natural habitats

27:13

and then on the other like whales kept

27:16

in oversized

27:16

swimming pools and forced to perform

27:18

for screaming children.

27:20

Certainly on the face of it if you take

27:22

in a very social mammal living in a large social

27:24

group or like orcas in a family pod and then you separate

27:27

them you would assume that they aren't

27:29

having a lot of fun in that scenario. That's

27:31

probably true although it's very species

27:33

specific and probably very individual

27:36

dolphin specific and also really hard to

27:38

measure.

27:39

Like if you think like you know common bottlenose

27:41

dolphins they live way out at the pelagic species

27:43

they live out in middle of nowhere. Like if you take one of those

27:45

and you put it in captivity it like dies

27:47

instantly. It's like it cannot

27:50

handle whatever the captivity constraints

27:52

are. But a bottlenose dolphin

27:54

pretty resilient species gets

27:56

along really well with humans can

27:58

handle like new social groupings okay,

28:01

they're probably not as freaked

28:03

out as other species would be.

28:06

Researchers do keep dolphins in captivity

28:08

to study them, right? Do you have any idea how do they

28:10

make sure that the dolphins are okay that they're

28:12

studying them but they're not in distress? Yeah,

28:15

people

28:15

who study them, and these days it's a lot better

28:18

than it used to be, and some facilities are way

28:20

better at this than others. They will have veterinarians

28:23

and research teams whose whole job it is

28:25

to monitor their levels of,

28:27

you know, hormones, stress hormones and things just to make

28:29

sure they're okay. And then you have behavior experts who

28:31

are there with the dolphins all the time just

28:33

to monitor their

28:35

behavior.

28:36

But of course that's always the controversy like, oh,

28:39

okay, but you don't really know what the dolphins

28:41

experiencing consciously, like how does

28:43

it actually feel? So it's hard to know for

28:45

sure. So you're making a best guess. Like if a dolphin

28:47

is like list list and not eating, probably

28:49

sad. If they're running around and swimming

28:52

around and playing and happy

28:53

looking, making a lot of sounds, they're probably

28:56

okay. But like, who knows for sure? And

28:58

again, like how do you measure it

29:00

within the science of it? You just have two

29:02

camps. There's like people who are like captivity

29:05

is the worst and let me show you all the ways and

29:07

then people are like, it's not that bad. Check these

29:09

experiments out to show you. So there's

29:11

no consensus.

29:12

So there was a series of papers on cetacean

29:15

welfare and professionally managed programs

29:18

and it was published in 2021 and it was about

29:20

enrichment and habitat use and cortisol

29:22

levels. But it was conducted

29:25

by and partnered with 43 different

29:28

zoos and Aquaria who

29:30

tend to land on the captivity is

29:32

fine side of the aisle, despite

29:34

the backlash that has erupted in the decade

29:37

since the documentary blackfish gave

29:39

people the big ick about sea world. But

29:42

if you're say

29:42

cruising in the wild, how many dolphins

29:45

are out there? What about species

29:47

of dolphins? How many dolphins are

29:49

out there?

29:50

Nobody knows. Okay. Okay. Like

29:52

it's about somewhere

29:54

between 38 42. Like scientists fight

29:56

about that too. Like I love reading the

29:58

literature where they're just yelling.

31:59

Sometimes stupid reasons, complicated

32:02

social species often fight about stuff.

32:05

There are reasons for like, related to

32:07

mating and other things, but for the most part,

32:09

they can get grumpy. Wow.

32:12

Can you imagine just your whole look

32:15

is defined on how much bickering you've done? It's

32:18

like an MMA fighter or like a wrestler

32:20

who's got like cauliflower ear. You can tell like, oh,

32:23

this person gets in a ton of fights.

32:25

Can you imagine if they're like, this species

32:27

of alleyward has very patchy

32:30

hair and it's just because people keep pulling it out because I'm

32:32

just a bitch. I just

32:33

keep getting in bar fights. It's

32:36

true. Well, I mean, almost all species, like

32:38

they're covered in something called rake marks,

32:40

which is when a dolphin bites another dolphin

32:42

and like drags its teeth across it. They

32:45

don't scar up very deeply, but they'll last

32:47

for maybe a year. And so like any

32:49

species that you see is just covered

32:52

in rake marks. Rizzo's dolphins, I don't know if you've ever

32:54

seen these. They're kind of big. They got a blunt

32:56

head and they are like this patchwork

32:58

gray and they are just covered at all

33:01

times in rake marks. They're just fighting each

33:03

other and it'd

33:03

be like you and all of your friends just

33:06

had your hair ripped out all the time. So

33:08

feisty. I guess they do that instead of

33:10

having like city council meetings where everyone's yelling, which

33:12

is another way to live. But what

33:15

is their skin like? Have you ever touched dolphin skin?

33:17

I have touched a

33:19

lot of dead dolphin skin and a living

33:21

dolphin skin maybe once. It

33:24

is not like a weird rubber tire, which is it looks

33:26

like it's actually kind of warm and nice

33:29

and smooth.

33:29

It's warm. Yes, they're warm.

33:32

It's nice. It's

33:34

lovely to touch actually. It's not that clammy

33:37

and cold like a piece of rubber.

33:38

If you put my hand on a religious

33:40

text and forced me to guess the body

33:43

temperature of a dolphin, I would be like 65 degrees,

33:46

like

33:47

whatever the temperature of a wet rag is.

33:49

Incorrect. So I looked this up in a paper

33:51

titled Thermal Tolerance in Bottlenose

33:54

Dolphins, which measured it at a depth

33:56

of 25 centimeters rectally. That's 9

33:59

to 10.

33:59

inches up the butt of a dolphin. And

34:02

it turns out that

34:03

dolphin body temperature is 36 to 37 degrees Celsius.

34:08

And Americans, I got you. That is 96.8

34:12

to 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, also known

34:15

as your body temperature right now. So

34:17

dolphins are out there skinny dipping through

34:20

ocean tides with the same damn

34:22

temperature as us, thanks to some

34:24

blubber. But given that they're the same

34:27

temperature as us and they have brains like ours,

34:29

but larger, I wondered like, does heat

34:31

have anything to do with cephalization

34:33

rates? Are bigger brains

34:35

hotter? And I happened upon the 2021 study,

34:38

amplification of potential thermogenic

34:41

mechanisms in cetacean brains compared

34:43

to artedactyl brains, aka hoofed

34:45

ungulates from which they evolved. So

34:48

this study said that because dolphin brains

34:50

have much smaller prefrontal cortices

34:53

than humans and hippocampal regions, all

34:55

that extra brain matter might not

34:57

be going toward cognition, but

35:00

just keeping its noggin warm and

35:02

that their data supports the thermogenesis

35:05

hypothesis of cetacean brain evolution

35:07

and function.

35:09

Rude, but interesting. And

35:11

their skin is very similar to ours. In terms

35:13

of all the receptors it has on it for, you know,

35:16

light touch or whatever, it's very, very sensitive.

35:18

They have very sensitive skin, especially around the blowhole

35:21

where they need to go up to the surface to breathe because then they

35:23

know when they've pierced through the water and

35:25

they can sense the air. It's very

35:27

similar in a way to ours. More on sensitive

35:29

blowholes later. How

35:32

long can they stay underwater and

35:34

surface

35:35

and they have to think to

35:37

breathe?

35:39

Yes. What? They are conscious

35:41

breathers. So like you and I, like as

35:43

we're talking, like our breathing is happening

35:45

subconsciously. It's part of our brain just handles

35:47

it when we go to sleep or breathing. Dolphins

35:49

do not have that. They are literally consciously

35:52

saying like, okay, breathe now. Like

35:54

they do not have the ability to turn it

35:56

off and just have it happen automatically, which

35:58

just makes sense. because most

36:01

of the time they're underwater. So if their brain was like,

36:03

hey, I'm going to take a breath now, they'd be like, oh, no, no, and

36:05

then they just drown. So thankfully

36:08

they have voluntary control over it. And

36:10

the dolphin species don't hold their breath all

36:12

that long. Like there are some human

36:14

divers, like free divers who can hold their breath longer

36:17

than some dolphin species. So

36:19

they do come up to breathe quite a bit.

36:22

So usually they surface two to three times a

36:24

minute to breathe, but they can on average

36:26

hold their breath for around 10 minutes and a sperm

36:29

whale can hold its breath for up to 90 minutes

36:32

while hunting in the deeps. But the mammalian

36:34

record is a beaked whale that

36:36

lasted 222 minutes underwater without breathing

36:39

or 3.7 hours. That

36:42

is the exact length of the 1962

36:45

film

36:46

Lawrence of Arabia. You can probably

36:48

hold your breath, but don't try it

36:50

using that film because you can probably only hold your

36:52

breath for 30 to 60 seconds. But

36:54

a Tom Cruise can hold its breath for six

36:56

minutes and a Kate Winslet can famously

36:59

best that with a seven minute and 15

37:01

second breath hold for the film

37:04

Avatar 2. And those numbers, I'm

37:06

sorry guys,

37:07

they're weak sauce to a man from Croatia

37:10

who breathed in pure oxygen and then held

37:12

it for over 24 minutes, breaking

37:14

the world record in 2021. But

37:16

you know what? 30 to 60 seconds is fine.

37:19

That's fine. Breathing is cool as hell.

37:21

You have nothing to prove. So just keep at it as

37:23

often as you need to. Okay, what about sleeping?

37:26

I feel like I read somewhere, tell me if this is flim

37:28

flam. Does one half of the

37:30

brain sleep while the other one is awake? Does

37:33

that happen? Yeah, totally true. Oh,

37:35

but not okay. Yeah. And it's because

37:37

of this conscious breathing thing. And so like,

37:40

you know how like one half of the brain is connected

37:42

to the opposite side of the body. So if you

37:44

see a sleeping dolphin, they will have like one eye

37:46

closed and the other one is open.

37:48

And they're just sort of lazily swimming

37:51

along.

37:52

And that's because half of their brain is keeping

37:54

them awake to look out for sharks

37:56

to stay with the other dolphin friends it's swimming with

37:59

and to go up to the surface.

37:59

to breathe.

38:01

And so it'll do that for a few hours

38:03

and then it'll switch so the other side of the brain now

38:05

takes over and

38:06

it'll just sort of like slowly

38:08

lazily keep going up to take a breath

38:10

and they sleep for maybe eight-ish hours depending

38:13

on the species in total switching off and

38:15

on.

38:15

And is that I mean I suppose that must be

38:18

restful enough right?

38:19

Totally, it works great for them and there

38:21

are these crazy experiments where they're like this

38:23

is really true so we're gonna see how awake

38:26

they are or how much rest they're getting and so you do this

38:28

experiment where you get the dolphin

38:30

to like touch a paddle like every minute and

38:32

you just keep that up for hours and hours and

38:34

days and days and see if it will still do

38:36

it and yep they could do it forever.

38:39

Like they're awake enough to like actually engage

38:41

in things and are obviously getting enough sleep to

38:44

survive. Wow,

38:44

what are they eating? Who's eating what? They

38:48

eat the stuff you would totally expect them to eat

38:50

so whatever fish and squid

38:52

and such. Do they have to dive really deep? Some

38:55

species

38:55

do need to get down into the area where

38:57

the fish are. There are species that will they're

38:59

in the shallow parts of the ocean they'll dig into

39:01

the sand they can actually see into the sand with

39:04

their echolocation that's a whole thing and find

39:06

buried fish there and so they

39:08

will follow fish down around places hunting

39:11

at night hunting during the day. There's so

39:13

many diverse ways that they get food and

39:15

tactics that they use like the

39:17

tool use you see with sponges and Shark Bay

39:20

they will use tools to find fish. They use these

39:22

crazy techniques while they're they make

39:24

all these

39:25

like mud plumes in a big circle

39:27

to like herd the fish in and then they'll jump

39:30

through it's crazy complicated.

39:32

What about sonar in your face? So

39:34

Justin is an expert in this and

39:36

we'll get to it right after a quick break

39:39

from sponsors who make it possible to donate to

39:41

a cause of theologist choosing and this

39:43

week Justin directed it toward the Dolphin

39:45

Communication Project whose mission is

39:47

to promote the scientific study of dolphins and

39:50

inspire their conservation. So whether

39:52

you're a young student interested in learning more

39:55

about dolphin biology or a college

39:57

student looking for internship experiences working

39:59

with dolphins or a seasoned

40:01

researcher hoping to connect with colleagues

40:03

on topics of dolphin behavior, ecology

40:05

or cognition. Dolphin Communication Project

40:08

has you covered. And Justin is a senior research

40:10

associate with them and the Dolphin

40:12

Communication Project will be linked in the show notes. So thanks

40:14

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Okay, let's dig into their

45:17

enviable ability to see

45:19

with sound. What about the echolocation?

45:23

They navigate through dark waters using

45:25

it? Yeah, so echolocation for

45:27

dolphins is very similar to bats in that

45:30

they make a click sound and

45:32

it goes into the water, bounces

45:34

off of the thing and comes back. And that provides

45:36

them with some sort of something

45:38

maybe like a mental image of what's out there.

45:45

There's great experiments to show that

45:48

the echolocation is just as powerful as

45:50

their vision in terms of producing information

45:52

about the objects that it's chasing. And so it works

45:54

in the dark. So they can navigate,

45:57

they can find fish, hunt fish, all with just making

45:59

these clicking sounds. And if you swim with dolphins in

46:01

the wild, especially, it's just like constant.

46:04

There's constant echolocation happening all

46:06

the time.

46:07

How do they not get confused since there's

46:09

such social creatures about whose echolocation

46:11

is where? Does that ever confuse them to hear

46:13

all these clicky, clicky, clickies? Yes.

46:16

Now this is exciting. Now you're getting into the area that I

46:18

studied for my own like PhD stuff,

46:20

right? Okay. His PhD dissertation, joint

46:23

attention and echoic eavesdropping

46:26

in wild bottlenose dolphins. His

46:29

eavesdrop? Oh, spill it.

46:32

Echolocation is directional in the sense that

46:35

it doesn't just go out willy nilly. You

46:37

know the top, the forehead of a dolphin, it's like this

46:39

big clumpy lump. That is

46:41

filled with a fatty material that they can actually

46:43

control and move around and shape.

46:46

And they can shape the echolocation outgoing

46:48

clicks into like a beam. So it's like a flashlight

46:51

and they can make it wider or narrower.

46:54

And so they're running around with their

46:56

swimming around with flashlight beams out. And

46:59

so they, you know, it's like Ghostbusters. They don't

47:01

necessarily, they don't cross the beams. They can separate

47:04

themselves so that they don't mess each other up.

47:07

But now this is exciting. This

47:09

is because this is what I studied. So let's

47:12

say you and I are swimming next to each other. We're dolphins.

47:16

And you're echolocating on a fish. And

47:18

I just happen to be right next to you.

47:20

The clicks that you've made also

47:23

go, I can hear them.

47:24

They go into my jaw. That's how dolphins, that's where the

47:26

ear is up into the inner ear. And

47:28

I can get a mental image of what you're

47:30

echolocating on because I'm next to you. So

47:33

whatever you're echolocating on, I also see

47:35

in my brain.

47:36

Do they hunt together that way? It seems

47:38

like they do. Yeah. So like if you get a

47:40

group of them, they won't all be like click, click,

47:42

click, click. Like there might be a couple that will

47:44

make the echolocation and the other ones

47:47

are quiet next to them. They've got it figured

47:49

out. So they don't jam each

47:51

other. Like if you're on a road trip, you

47:53

don't need everyone in the car to

47:55

drive or even have their individual

47:57

phones, GPS blaring for the

47:59

same destination.

47:59

They're like, you want to chirp? Should

48:02

I chirp? And another one's like, hey

48:04

man, I'll chirp. If I'm not navigating, I

48:06

get seasick. What about some

48:08

kind of ultrasonic capabilities?

48:11

Is that through the echolocation? Yeah. So

48:13

humans here are up to 20 kilohertz

48:15

and dolphins can make sounds up to like 140, 150.

48:19

So just stuff that's way outside of our range.

48:22

The clicks work so that the lower ones just like

48:24

us travel further. And so

48:26

the higher frequency clicks that they use

48:28

give them more detailed information. So if they

48:30

really need to figure out the details, they'll change

48:34

where the energy is in the frequency spectrum to

48:36

get better details of things. And they'll

48:38

use those really high frequencies for that.

48:40

I remember Joy Reidenberg.

48:43

So we had her on for functional morphology and

48:45

she's amazing. And

48:47

she mentioned about how dolphins

48:49

were used for military training, kinds of things.

48:52

She also mentioned that when she was pregnant, dolphins

48:56

gathered all around her, kind

48:58

of like poking at her belly, like there's another

49:00

one in here. And that

49:02

they're able to almost

49:04

like see things like an ultrasound.

49:05

Yeah. A lot of people have

49:08

that particular story, like their dolphins

49:10

are interested in pregnant women. That

49:12

seems to be happened so much that it's probably

49:15

true. I don't know if it's been formally studied,

49:18

but it's completely within the realm of

49:20

normalcy. Because the echolocation

49:23

clicks are in the water and like the human tissue

49:25

is mostly water. So it's not

49:27

too difficult for that click to go through the

49:29

belly, hit the baby, and then

49:32

the baby's got like bones in it.

49:33

And so it bounces off of the bones

49:36

and comes out. So if a dolphin is used to echolocating

49:38

on a regular non-pregnant person

49:41

and it doesn't have a weird sack of bones

49:43

in the front of the stomach, suddenly

49:46

they show up with a sack of bones. They're like, what

49:48

is this? I

49:51

would like to see the baby. What about

49:53

dolphins pregnant themselves? Do

49:55

they have litters of two?

49:58

Do they have ones? What are they?

49:59

tend to produce. They're usually popping out just

50:02

the

50:02

one and that's the

50:04

strongest bond in the dolphin community,

50:07

most all species, is between the mother and the calf. So the

50:09

calf comes out and it's kind of small. It comes

50:11

out all folded up. It's absolutely adorable.

50:13

If you like look on YouTube for like dolphin

50:15

birth, they come out and they're all like

50:18

they're literally folded. The dorsal fin is flopped

50:20

over, the flukes are flopped over and

50:22

it just sort of plops out like a little plush

50:24

toy. Now

50:25

given that they have a face shaped

50:28

like a dildo, you would imagine they

50:30

would come out snoot first, but

50:32

no, oh no. Dolphin

50:35

babies, they're called calves because again, they

50:37

descended from deer that were on dry

50:39

land. These little gremlins scoot out

50:42

of dolphin vaginas tail first,

50:45

which is not aerodynamic,

50:47

but they end with a bang on their face

50:49

reveal. They're like, hello, it's me. And

50:52

then also a plume of

50:54

what looks like strawberry jam

50:55

in the water, kind of like a party horn.

50:58

And they're immediately swimming as if they'd been

51:00

doing laps in the momma dolphin who

51:02

is a fish with a womb, but not a fish.

51:04

And then the mom pushes it up

51:06

to the surface and then it's there.

51:08

It stays right next to the mom, almost not

51:10

leaving the mom's side for like months and months

51:13

and it'll be there for two years, like nursing

51:15

off of her.

51:16

Where are them boobies? They

51:19

are inside. So you have these mammary

51:21

slits. So they look literally

51:24

like just somebody like slit the dolphin with

51:26

a knife and they're on just on

51:28

the side of the umbilical

51:30

area and the genitals up from

51:32

that. And so if you're a little dolphin and you want to drink

51:35

milk, you poke at that area

51:37

with your rostrum.

51:38

So that's the nose or the snoot and

51:40

it comes from the Latin word for beak. And

51:43

then the mom sort of squirts out milk

51:46

in like a jet. And then

51:48

the dolphin drinks it. So they're not putting their

51:50

rostrum inside. It comes out like a,

51:53

I don't know, like you're hosing

51:55

somebody down with like a beer from a keg. I

51:57

don't know what the analogy is.

53:52

You've

54:01

heard the otter story. You can see the Lutronology

54:03

episode for more on this. It will blow

54:06

your mind, it'll break your heart, it'll shatter

54:08

your love of otters. I'm sorry.

54:10

And it is like crazy. Like the

54:12

male will grab the female and like, and she

54:14

does not look like she is all

54:17

interested in that. But what is that? Like

54:19

it's part of the system. And so like

54:21

it's really difficult to know what a female otter is thinking

54:23

in that. But what's weird with dolphins is they

54:26

don't have

54:27

hands or feet

54:29

or, and so like there's nobody grabbing

54:31

anybody and holding them. And so

54:33

it never, there's no examples of forced

54:36

copulation in, in the dolphin world

54:38

in that sense. Because it looks kind of like

54:40

the female is not interested in mating with these,

54:43

but sort of, maybe it's hard to tell what's going

54:45

on. And so maybe she is

54:47

interested, but then you get into vaginas

54:50

and then things get interesting.

54:51

Talk to me about dolphin vaginas.

54:53

So, so there's so

54:55

many cool experiments on vaginas and they, species

54:59

have folds in their vaginas,

55:01

right? So like the vagina of a dolphin, depending

55:03

on species, is pretty convoluted. It's almost weirdly

55:06

corkscrew-y shaped with all these weird cavities

55:09

and folds. And that tells you

55:11

that there's competition between the male

55:13

and the female when it comes to whose

55:15

sperm gets to fertilize the egg. So a

55:18

female might not want to mate with

55:20

like these three males that are coming at her, but

55:22

she will end up mating with them. But while

55:24

she's mating with them, let's say she likes George's,

55:27

she likes George the best. She'd like him to

55:29

be the dad. And she doesn't like Fred and

55:31

Charlie or her. And so while Fred and Charlie are,

55:33

they've ejaculated inside her. She

55:35

can sort of twist her body and shift

55:38

the vagina around so that the sperm ends up like in

55:40

a fold somewhere. And then the other guy

55:42

she wants to mate with, she can kind of make

55:44

it so that sperm gets through.

55:46

So in that sense, she might be

55:49

cool with mating with a bunch of these dudes, even

55:51

though she doesn't necessarily want them all to be

55:53

the dad, but she has some control. Oh

55:56

my God. She's putting it

55:57

away in a drawer. She's like, I'm not going to use this. I

56:00

mean, oh my God, what about

56:02

a blowhole sex? Does

56:05

that happen? For some reason, if I go down

56:07

in infamy, it's for having

56:10

debunked the concept of blowhole

56:12

sex. So please allow me to talk about this. This

56:16

is my favorite subject.

56:18

Which is

56:20

why, okay. So.

56:24

Let's get into it. Like there

56:27

are lots of pictures

56:28

on the internet of this one

56:30

like drawing of blowhole sex. And Ricky Gervais

56:32

did a whole comedy special where he talks about blowhole

56:35

sex. He shows this picture. Can we have the

56:37

next one please? Oh, it's a good one.

56:39

Two forms of copulation

56:42

between bo-toes, they're a type of dolphin. Genital

56:44

slit or anal penetration above. And

56:48

blowhole penetration. Oh

56:51

yes. And the idea is like, a

56:54

dolphin will be underwater

56:57

with another dolphin and stick the penis in

56:59

the blowhole. So

57:01

when I heard this, there's

57:03

like a picture. So

57:13

I'm like, it must be from a scientific study. But

57:15

to me, I'm like, this doesn't make any damn sense.

57:18

Because if a dolphin opens its blowhole

57:20

underwater, which we know is a conscious

57:23

act, it has to decide to do that.

57:25

Water gets in its lungs. And

57:27

that's bad. And it would die.

57:29

So I'm like, there's no way they're

57:31

doing that. So I'm like, where does this come from?

57:34

And so I tracked down where that image came from. And

57:36

it's from this one paper, which is referencing

57:38

another paper from like,

57:40

ages and ages ago. So I found the original

57:43

and only reference to

57:45

dolphin blowhole sex in the peer reviewed literature.

57:48

And it was from this observation at

57:50

a zoo in Germany, where there are these river dolphins.

57:53

As detailed in the 1985 paper, some

57:55

observations on behavior of two or

57:57

no-co dolphins in captivity at

57:59

Dweisberg Zoo in the Journal

58:02

of Aquatic Mammals. There are also

58:04

illustrations in which the dolphins

58:06

appear to be smiling. And the

58:08

people who were observing it said, oh, the

58:10

dolphin's penis, sometimes during these

58:12

social play things with two males, would

58:15

go around and sometimes into the blowhole

58:17

of the other dolphin.

58:18

And I'm like, okay, that sounds wrong. So I tried

58:21

to track down the authors, like most of them were dead.

58:23

I found a living one. I'm like, were you there? Did

58:26

you see a penis going to the blowhole? And he's like,

58:29

no, it played around the blowhole.

58:31

It never went in.

58:32

And that's it. That was the only

58:34

scientific observation of blowhole sex

58:36

and it never happened.

58:37

So not even the tip. Just

58:41

the tip, he said. And no, there's not even

58:43

the tip. Everything was fully out.

58:46

The myth as we know it, yes, is busted. Well,

58:49

what's happening communication wise? Like,

58:52

do you think you can glean anything

58:54

about dolphin sexuality based

58:57

on the squeaky squeaks that they make? About

58:59

their sexuality. Yeah. It's

59:01

hard to know.

59:01

I mean, that's when you're studying dolphin communication, that's the main

59:04

thing you do is you're like, okay, I'm going to record all these sounds. I'm

59:06

going to figure out what they correlate with. Like, does

59:08

a dolphin make this sound when this happens? That's

59:11

kind of what we've been doing for a long time. And the

59:13

answer is, we don't

59:15

really know. Like, there's

59:18

not a lot of clarity in terms of those

59:20

sounds and whether like you can tell when they're

59:22

hunting because they're making echolocation sounds.

59:25

And you can tell when they've maybe found a meal because

59:27

they'll make certain kinds of whistles. So you can

59:29

tell excitement levels or whatever. But

59:31

the one sound,

59:31

and this is fascinating, that we know

59:34

definitely correlates to something is

59:36

the signature whistle. And that is

59:38

for the whistling species out there, because not all dolphins

59:40

whistle. Some of them only make click sounds. For

59:43

some whistling species, when a young

59:45

dolphin is born, it will create

59:48

a whistle that is unique to itself

59:50

that it makes.

59:52

And so it functions in a sense

59:54

like a name.

59:55

So if you hear that dolphin whistle, you can be like,

59:57

oh, that's, that's dolphin 183. I know.

59:59

know that whistle. And so you think, okay,

1:00:02

but it'd be weird. If you were Allie and you're like, I'm

1:00:04

going to go out into Main

1:00:06

Street and just shout my name over and over and over again,

1:00:09

you'd be like, well, what's the point of that? This

1:00:11

person's crazy. And so it could

1:00:13

be to announce that you're there, which is a perfectly normal

1:00:16

thing for an animal to do. It's like, hey, it's me. I'm here. I'm

1:00:18

here. I'm here.

1:00:19

But we know that they sometimes use each

1:00:21

other's names. So sometimes someone

1:00:23

else, a dolphin will make someone else's

1:00:26

signature whistle sound to get their attention.

1:00:28

So that means that that dolphin has labeled

1:00:30

that other dolphin as a name. And so

1:00:33

that's

1:00:33

very, very rare in the animal kingdom,

1:00:36

which is one of the reasons dolphins are so fascinating to

1:00:38

study because they can label each other.

1:00:40

Do other cetaceans

1:00:42

do that where they have a whistle to

1:00:45

announce themselves? Yeah, those

1:00:47

sort of contact calls, things where you

1:00:49

just make a sound to say that you're

1:00:51

here, but it's rare for it to be specific

1:00:53

to an individual. Sometimes you can

1:00:56

like, like I know the sound

1:00:58

of your voice. I listen to ologies. I know what you sound like.

1:01:00

So I could pick you out of a crowd, but that's

1:01:02

not the same thing. That's just me understanding

1:01:04

how your voice sounds different from like my wife's voice.

1:01:06

Like I know the difference, but that's not the same thing

1:01:08

as a name.

1:01:09

Well speaking of that, AI

1:01:12

can simulate people's voices

1:01:14

a little too well,

1:01:17

in my scared opinion.

1:01:20

Can you as researchers use

1:01:23

AI to mimic certain calls

1:01:26

or noises to see how dolphins respond

1:01:28

if you don't have a Mariah Carey handy who

1:01:30

is ineffective as a scientific tool anyway?

1:01:33

You totally

1:01:34

could. And there are lots of ways

1:01:36

in which humans are experimenting

1:01:38

with dolphins using artificial

1:01:40

sounds. Denise Herzing, she's got

1:01:43

this little machine that they're working

1:01:45

on and it produces fake whistle

1:01:47

sounds that are matched

1:01:49

up to objects and activities. And so she's in

1:01:52

the water with her research team trying to get the dolphins

1:01:54

to learn and use those sounds back.

1:01:57

So that's one way to make it. And the dolphins, it

1:01:59

sounds very

1:01:59

a regular dolphin whistle, it's been manipulated.

1:02:03

And then I was reading an article about how you

1:02:05

can broadcast fake

1:02:07

dolphin or whale sounds that

1:02:09

actually contain secret messages. So

1:02:12

if you have a blue whale sound and it goes like,

1:02:15

they're so low and so loud, they travel almost

1:02:17

all the way around the ocean, all the way around the earth.

1:02:20

And so

1:02:21

if you're a military and you have to communicate

1:02:23

with another submarine halfway around the globe,

1:02:26

you could put like fake messages into

1:02:28

this artificially generated blue whale sound

1:02:31

like crypto stuff.

1:02:34

That's

1:02:34

cool. That's got to freak out the whales though, right?

1:02:37

Right? Yes. And ocean noise

1:02:39

is such a problem. Oh my God, we're already loud

1:02:41

enough. We do not need to introduce fake whale

1:02:43

sounds. Thank you.

1:02:44

Oh God. What about you

1:02:46

and your research? Where do you pull a lot of your

1:02:48

data and examples from? What

1:02:51

kind of... Do you need to use spectrographs?

1:02:53

How are you figuring out what

1:02:54

is what? So at our research

1:02:57

organization, we have like an

1:02:59

underwater camera. So we're recording

1:03:01

dolphin behavior underwater, which

1:03:04

is rare because most research is done from the boat. And

1:03:06

then we've got some hydrophones kicking out to the side

1:03:08

so we can record their sound. So the way

1:03:10

we do it is we get in the water, whether

1:03:13

it's a captive facility or a wild

1:03:15

group of dolphins, and you don't

1:03:18

want the dolphins to interact with you. You're

1:03:20

just there like a creeper behind

1:03:22

a bush hoping that they don't

1:03:24

notice you because you want them to

1:03:27

act normal.

1:03:27

And usually it takes years and years and years and years

1:03:29

and years for them to ignore you. And

1:03:32

they usually don't. And so that's what we want is we want to

1:03:34

record their natural behavior, which is rare,

1:03:36

but it does happen. It happens enough so that we

1:03:38

can get a picture of what they're really

1:03:40

doing. So we've got the audio and the visuals

1:03:43

and we know who all the dolphins are because

1:03:45

we're at these locations for decades.

1:03:48

So we're like, oh, this is the

1:03:50

son of this female who is the...so

1:03:52

we can trace back generations.

1:03:54

So some of that is in the wild then? Yeah,

1:03:56

we had

1:03:56

a research site in the Bahamas around Bimini

1:03:58

with a group of dolphins that

1:03:59

that lives there all the time, just offshore. And

1:04:02

then I did my research out in Japan around

1:04:04

the island of Mikura, which has a

1:04:06

resident population of Indo-Pacific bottlenose

1:04:09

dolphins, and a tourist industry. So there's boats that go

1:04:11

out to watch them, and I would just get on the

1:04:13

boat and then jump over the side with my camera

1:04:15

and watch all the tourists chase after

1:04:17

the dolphins and fail to catch them, and then I'd just record

1:04:20

them. Yeah, that's amazing. That's

1:04:22

gorgeous.

1:04:22

Was anyone ever surprised?

1:04:24

Like, hey, what's that guy doing? How's,

1:04:27

what's he, why is he in the water? Yes,

1:04:29

I was just, you know, because I'm like this

1:04:30

tall white dude with

1:04:32

this, I'm so skinny and

1:04:34

weird looking, and then I've got this giant camera,

1:04:37

and it's just, it must have been massively confusing

1:04:39

to an average Japanese tourist. My Japanese was terrible.

1:04:42

I could just pretty much say, excuse me. Sumimasen.

1:04:45

Yeah, it was probably weird for them, but, and

1:04:47

I would always do a thing, because I've been with dolphins

1:04:49

for so long, I know what they like and don't

1:04:52

like, and they don't like if you swim at them.

1:04:54

This is my pro tip. If you're ever swimming with

1:04:56

a dolphin, here's my pro tip. Don't swim

1:04:58

at them. Swim in

1:05:00

the same direction that they're swimming as

1:05:02

fast as you can.

1:05:04

And then they might come up to you and be like,

1:05:06

oh, what's this guy doing? But

1:05:09

if you swim at them, they're like, get out of here. And then they

1:05:11

leave. Do you need to wear massive

1:05:13

flippers for that? Yeah, especially because I

1:05:15

suck at swimming. I picked the wrong career,

1:05:17

perhaps. So I, the

1:05:20

bigger the flippers, the faster you can go. So I'm always

1:05:22

the guy out front, the weird skinny white

1:05:24

guy with the camera swimming alongside the

1:05:26

dolphins. That was what I did with my massive flippers.

1:05:29

Did you ever feel like you had a moment with a dolphin,

1:05:31

not like a let's

1:05:33

move to a house in Florida together moment, but did you

1:05:36

ever have a moment where you felt like a dolphin was

1:05:38

like, hey man, what's up, how you been? Incestently.

1:05:39

There are dolphins that

1:05:42

I would see over and over again, because you can recognize

1:05:44

them based on their spot patterns or their dorsal fin

1:05:46

or scars. And I would have some dolphins who

1:05:48

just seemed interested in me, and I was interested in them,

1:05:51

and they'd spend more time with me. And

1:05:53

people who study them long-term have this all the time.

1:05:56

They'll often have different personalities, obviously. And

1:05:58

so you'll have some that are curious.

1:05:59

friendly and I did make some friends

1:06:02

as it were. And

1:06:03

so I've had

1:06:04

it's so difficult as a dolphin researcher

1:06:07

to remain cool and objective.

1:06:09

And so like, yeah, I'm just, this isn't

1:06:12

the best thing that's ever happened. I'm just a scientist.

1:06:15

And so it can be hard to be chill about

1:06:17

it, but you're supposed to be chill. But like,

1:06:19

yeah, there's dolphins that I've known and

1:06:21

some have died and I'm like legitimately sad. It's like

1:06:23

my cat died, you know, or and so

1:06:26

yeah, you make friends.

1:06:27

How do you know if a dolphin considers you a bro? If

1:06:31

it's not trying to attack me, I'd say that's probably

1:06:33

the good baseline. But

1:06:36

no, I think because dolphins behavior

1:06:38

underwater is not always 100% easy

1:06:41

to understand for some people because

1:06:43

their aggressive behavior can look like

1:06:45

playful behavior. And so they are aggressive

1:06:48

and signaling to people to like back off. But

1:06:50

then there's sometimes very friendly and they will playfully

1:06:52

bite at your flippers and, and sometimes

1:06:54

they will even touch you, which is very rare.

1:06:57

But if a dolphin comes up with their pectoral

1:06:59

fin and sort of like

1:07:00

rubs against you in a nice way, like

1:07:03

you've made it. That's when you know like

1:07:05

you're in the group.

1:07:06

Oh my God, I have so many questions.

1:07:09

Can I ask them? Yes, please.

1:07:11

Oh gosh. I bet there's an LSD question in

1:07:13

there. I hope. Let me check. Let me find

1:07:15

and control. Yep.

1:07:19

Four of them. Four people asked about let's get straight

1:07:21

to it. So

1:07:23

come back, come back next week to

1:07:25

hear all about dolphins on acid and

1:07:28

all of your most burning dolphin questions. I

1:07:30

promise you this episode only gets weirder in

1:07:32

part two. It's a good one. And

1:07:34

meanwhile, ask intelligent people uninformed

1:07:36

questions because the whole point is to gather

1:07:39

intel and follow Justin Gregg

1:07:41

on TikTok, on Twitter, everywhere

1:07:44

at the

1:07:44

links in the show notes. We love him. His

1:07:46

books are also linked to the show notes and he

1:07:49

is as wonderful a writer as he

1:07:51

is a charming guest. So we are

1:07:53

at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Ali

1:07:55

Ward with 1L on both. I'm on TikTok at

1:07:58

Ali underscore Ologies.

1:07:59

are shorter kid-friendly episodes with

1:08:02

no swears. They're available at the link in the show notes. And

1:08:04

thank you, Zeke Rodriguez-Thomas and Mercedes Maitland for

1:08:06

working on those. Ologies merch is available

1:08:08

at ologiesmerch.com. Thank you, Susan Hale,

1:08:10

for managing that and doing so much more, like

1:08:13

everything, for Ologies. Noelle Dilworth

1:08:15

does the scheduling and saves my life constantly.

1:08:18

Erin Talbert-Admins, the Ologies Podcast Facebook

1:08:20

group with a sis from Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltis. Emily

1:08:23

White of the Wirdery does professional transcripts. Kelly

1:08:25

R. Dwyer makes our website and can make yours too. Nick

1:08:28

Thorburn made the theme music. Assistant

1:08:29

editors are the wonderful Mark David Christiansen

1:08:32

and Hunk of the Month, Jared Sleeper. And

1:08:34

lead editor with a giant brain is Mercedes

1:08:37

Maitland of Maitland Audio. And if you stick

1:08:39

around till the end of the episode, I will tell you a secret. And this

1:08:41

week is that I am at a hotel for a

1:08:43

science conference. And I fell asleep last

1:08:45

night working on this next to my laptop. And

1:08:47

I woke up in the middle of the night and my

1:08:49

laptop was warm and I thought it was my dog,

1:08:52

Grummy. And I went to pet it and I realized it was

1:08:54

a machine and that I'm not at home and it

1:08:56

was a very confusing moment. I also had

1:08:59

wacky dreams all

1:08:59

night. One of them involved piloting a hovercraft

1:09:03

and showing Amy Poehler a bunch of cool

1:09:05

scorpions and spiders. So I got to let

1:09:08

Dr. Domhoff from the dreaming

1:09:10

episode log that into his dream bank. So

1:09:12

many spiders, but it was a good time. Okay,

1:09:14

bye bye. Come back next week. Oh,

1:09:17

part two is so good. Okay, bye bye for real.

1:09:19

Pack of dermatology, omeology, cryptozoology,

1:09:23

lithology, and technology.

1:09:26

Meteorology. Dermatology.

1:09:29

Nephology. Cereology.

1:09:32

S It

1:09:38

sounded like you were fighting a dolphin in there. Oh,

1:09:41

I was just practicing

1:09:44

my Rosetta Stone dolphin tapes.

1:09:49

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