Scientists have recorded a “lonely” dolphin speaking to himself in the Baltic Sea.
Dolphins are known to be social animals and they have been seen “smiling” when they are playing with one another by scientists.
However, in a new find, scientists observed a lonely bottlenose dolphin, named Delle speaking to himself near the Svendborgsund channel in Demark.
Here’s how scientists found dolphin talking to himself
Scientists used a recording device to record the sounds, and the experts soon felt that the dolphin was talking to himself.
“Out of curiosity, I decided to add a recorder that captures actual sounds,” said Olga Filatova, cetacean biologist at the University of Southern Denmark and lead author of the study, while speaking to Live Science.
“I thought we might pick up a few distant whistles or something along those lines. I certainly didn’t anticipate recording thousands of different sounds,” she added.
In the recording, thousands of bursts of clicks, whistles, and other sounds of different frequencies were picked. In total, they recorded 10,833 sounds in a span of more than 69 days of recording.
Three different kinds of whistles were picked up in the recording, all of which were produced by the dolphin.
“Bottlenose dolphins have what are known as signature whistles, believed to be unique to each individual, much like a name,” explained Filatova.
“If we hadn’t known that Delle was alone, we might have concluded that a group of at least three dolphins was engaged in various social interactions,” she added.
“These sounds are traditionally considered communicative, meaning there should be at least two dolphins ‘talking’ to each other. But Delle was completely alone,” she further stated.
(With inputs from agencies)