Speculative Fact #304: We May Have Cracked the Code of Dolphins Language

     This is a first contact story. The researchers for Speak Dolphins in  Puerto Aventuras, Mexico may be the first to truly decode dolphin language. And it may be pictorial.  
   We already know that they use echolocation to navigate and hunt, but researchers now believe dolphins use the  "quasi-holographic properties of sound" to encode and send complex images back and forth to each other. Using 3-d printing technology, they were able to intercept and recreate the messages the dolphins are sending.  Then they played the recorded message back for other dolphins and the humans were understood! In other words, the noises weren't random and the images that were sent back and forth were universally known in that dolphin community. 

“Seeing the 3-D print of a human being left us all speechless,” Kassewitz said. “For the first time ever, we may be holding in our hands a glimpse into what cetaceans see with sound. Nearly every experiment is bringing us more images with more detail.” -Dr. Reid

     Once they build up a lexicon, the researchers could be our first inter-species ambassadors. Given ten years or so of language contact, how do you think that would change our relationship with dolphins? What other organisms might we communicate with in this way, real or imagined?

​-Rob Cameron