Therefore with frank and uncurbed plainness, tell us the dolphin's mind

[dogjones]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/jul/03/research.science

Very interesting stuff. Does anyone here have more intimate knowledge of this kind of research? I am wondering about this part in particular:

At Kewalo Basin Marine Laboratory in Hawaii, Lou Herman and his team set about testing a dolphin's ability to comprehend our language. They developed a sign language to communicate with the dolphins, and the results were remarkable. Not only do the dolphins understand the meaning of individual words, they also understand the significance of word order in a sentence. (One of their star dolphins, Akeakamai, has learned a vocabulary of more than 60 words and can understand more than 2,000 sentences.) Particularly impressive is the dolphins' relaxed attitude when new sentences are introduced. For example, the dolphins generally responded correctly to "touch the frisbee with your tail and then jump over it". This has the characteristics of true understanding, not rigid training.

Given the fact that the ape sign language people are somewhat woo-ish I wonder how compelling this research really is.

 

[INRM]

Since I was a kid, I have assumed that Dolphins were sentient just like us...