Marine researchers have found that bottlenose dolphin mothers noticeably increase the pitch and range of their signature whistles when around their calves.
Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, there’s been little research looking at whether the phenomenon exists in non-human animals.The new research was led by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. The team decided to study bottlenose dolphins in particular since they’re mammals known for forming long mother-child bonds, much like humans.
The researchers were able to study audio recordings made of the same 19 female wild bottlenose dolphins living in the waters near Sarasota Bay, Florida. The recordings spanned years of time and covered periods when the dolphins either were or weren’t spending time with calves dependent on them for survival. They focused on a specific type of dolphin communication, called a signature whistle. Dolphins are thought to use these whistles to identify themselves to other dolphins.
“That was true for every one of the moms in the study, all 19 of them,” study co-author Peter Tyack, a biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, told theThe findings will have to be replicated by other researchers to truly confirm that baby talk is widely prevalent among bottlenose dolphins. More research will be also needed to understand the uses and potential purpose of baby talk in the species.
Assuming this research holds up and is found elsewhere in the animal kingdom, though, baby talk might be an example of convergent evolution—an useful trait that arises independently in many not-so-closely related species for similar reasons.
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