News Releases
October 01, 2003
The Luna Stewardship Project (www.lunastewardship.com) has provided us with some audio of Luna's calls recorded last week. The audio file is about 30 minutes long and has some great calls that Luna made. These calls are J Clan calls (L Pod is in the J Clan) according to John Ford from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
Luna has been heard screaming above the surface recently. There are also reports that he has been doing this at the docks throughout the summer. Some scientific theories suggest that when cetaceans, such as whales or dolphins, do this, they are trying to communicate with other species.
Some of the popular beliefs about cetaceans come from the work and writings of John Lilly. Originally a neurophysiologist with an interest in the dolphin brain, Lilly began to understand that dolphins were too intelligent to experiment on, and forged his own path to interspecies communication. Although his later work remains controversial, many of his original ideas remain intriguing. Although able to mimic the prosodic aspects of human speech such as rhythm and intensity, dolphins were unable to produce consonants involved in the production of English sounds, most likely due to the lack of necessary anatomy.
Lillyıs team also found that dolphins would try to communicate with man through airborne sounds by mimicking speech. The dolphins also learned how to count, showing they could use their voice for symbolic use.
