Scientists have taught dolphins to combine both melody and sound to compose music, resulting in a short version with extremely high pitches of a song from the movie Batman.
The findings demonstrate for the first time that non-human mammals can recognize melodies and sing them back with words.
“Humans are sensitive to melodies in sound sequences, but we still assume that this skill is part of language and music processing—a cognitive domain unique to humans,” stated Heidi Harley, the lead researcher. “Clearly, some aspects of this domain appear in other species.”
Harley, a professor of social sciences at the University of Florida in Sarasota, USA, reported that they conducted experiments on dolphins at Buena Vista Park.
They placed a male bottlenose dolphin in front of an underwater music player. This device played six melodies, each lasting 4 seconds at a frequency of 14 kHz. The dolphin was rewarded each time it performed a behavior in response to a melody. For instance, when melody 1 played, it would flap its pectoral fin, and when melody 2 started, it would toss a ball.
The different melodies were played at various frequencies and tempos to ensure the dolphin recognized the melody rather than just the frequency or the sound pitch.
Another male dolphin was trained to produce similar melodies by pressing a button. The “button” was a small inflatable ball attached to a computer that generated sound when the animal pressed it.
“The animal was rewarded for producing a melody corresponding to an object,” Harley explained. “For example, when given a Batman doll, it would be rewarded with a fish for producing a specific melody—in this case, a short sound followed by a long sound.”
The dolphin would spontaneously vocalize to the melody, so the researchers rewarded it with a fish each time it matched its vocalization to the melody. By the end of the study, whenever the researchers presented an object, like the Batman doll, the animal could produce the exact sounds both vocally and by pressing the button.
Gordon Bauer, a psychology professor at the University of Florida, commented, “As far as I know, this is the first report of a non-human mammal being able to distinguish different melodies.” However, Bauer expressed skepticism regarding whether dolphins recognize they are creating what humans call “music.”
“I believe music is a human concept. I don’t think it applies to animals, although elements of music such as pitch, duration, timbre, and rhythm can be attributed to animal communication.”
M.T. (according to Discovery)