Bottlenose dolphins can call each other by name when they whistle,
making them the only animals besides humans know to recognize such 1. __________
identity information, scientists reported on Monday.
Dolphins communicate as humans by calling each other by name, 2. __________
scientists in Fife reported on Monday.
Scientists have long known that dolphins’ whistling calls including repeated 3. __________
information thought to be their names, but a new study indicates dolphins
recognize these names even when voice cues are removed in the sound. 4. __________
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-years-study was funded by the Royal Society of London. 5. __________
Dr Vincent Janik, of the Sea Mammal Unit at St Andrews University,
said they conduced the research on wild dolphins. 6. __________
“We captured wild dolphins using nets when they came near the
shore,” he said.
“Then in the deep water we recoded their whistles before synthesizing 7. __________
them on a computer with the caller’s voice features removed so that we
have a computer voice of a dolphin.” 8. __________
“Then we played it back to the dolphins through an underwater speaker
and we found they responded coolly. This showed us that the dolphins 9. __________
know each other’s signature whistle instead just the voice.” 10. _________
“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).
（責(zé)任編輯：liushengbao）
