{"id":529700,"date":"2026-04-14T03:58:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T03:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/529700\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T03:58:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T03:58:13","slug":"20-enormously-funny-photos-of-animals-in-the-wild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/529700\/","title":{"rendered":"20 enormously funny photos of animals in the wild"},"content":{"rendered":"

Human fascination with\u00a0bottlenose dolphins<\/a>\u00a0goes back thousands of years, at least as early as\u00a0Greek mythology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t until the 1960s that methodical research into dolphin communication began. Scientists like\u00a0John Lilly<\/a>\u00a0and the husband-and-wife team of\u00a0Melba and David Caldwell<\/a>\u00a0tried various experiments to decipher the sounds dolphins can make.<\/p>\n

The Caldwells figured out a way to record isolated animals in human care. They discovered that each individual dolphin communicated mostly with\u00a0one unique whistle<\/a>, which they called the \u201csignature whistle.\u201d Researchers now know that these whistles convey identities much like human names do. Dolphins use them to stay in touch with each other in their murky habitat, where vision is limited. It\u2019s like announcing \u201cI\u2019m over here!\u201d when someone can\u2019t see you.<\/p>\n

This discovery is foundational to my own research. I\u2019ve been\u00a0studying communication in wild dolphins<\/a>\u00a0since the mid-1980s, when I joined my mentor\u00a0Peter Tyack<\/a>\u00a0in documenting signature whistles in wild dolphins for the first time. Our team\u2019s research focused on a\u00a0resident community of free-ranging bottlenose dolphins<\/a>\u00a0in waters near Sarasota, Florida, where I continue to work today.<\/p>\n

This collaborative study, led by Randall Wells of Brookfield Zoo Chicago\u2019s\u00a0Sarasota Dolphin Research Program<\/a>, involves numerous researchers from a variety of institutions, who study different aspects of dolphin biology, health, ecology and behavior. Begun in 1970, this is the longest-running research project on\u00a0a population of wild cetaceans<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 whales, dolphins and porpoises \u2013 in the world.<\/p>\n

\"EachPhoto credit: Photo by Brookfield Zoo Chicago\u2019s Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, taken under NMFS MMPA Scientific Research Permit \u2013 Each dolphin has distinctive markings on its dorsal fin. Experienced researchers can sometimes identify them by sight in the field, and they photograph them to confirm their identity in the lab.<\/p>\n

Recording and observing<\/p>\n

Researchers know the age, sex and maternal relatedness of almost all of the approximately 170 dolphins in the Sarasota community. This depth of knowledge provides an unprecedented opportunity to study communication in a wild cetacean species.<\/p>\n

The dolphins in the Sarasota project are periodically subject to brief catch-and-release health assessments, during which researchers, including me, briefly handle individual dolphins.<\/p>\n

Our team attaches suction-cup hydrophones directly onto\u00a0each dolphin\u2019s melon<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 that is, its forehead. We then record the dolphins continuously throughout the health assessments, taking notes on who is being recorded when, and what is happening at the time.<\/p>\n

This is how my colleagues and I were able to confirm that wild dolphins, like captive animals, produced large numbers of individually distinctive signature whistles when briefly isolated from other dolphins. Through observations and recordings of known free-swimming dolphins, we were further able to confirm that they produced these same signature whistles in undisturbed contexts.<\/p>\n

We have organized these recordings into the\u00a0Sarasota Dolphin Whistle Database<\/a>, which now contains nearly 1,000 recording sessions of 324 individual dolphins. More than half of the dolphins in the database have been recorded more than once.<\/p>\n

We identify each dolphin\u2019s signature whistle based on its prevalence: In the catch-and-release context, about 85% of the whistles that dolphins produced are signature whistles. We can identify these visually, by viewing plots of frequency vs. time called spectrograms.<\/p>\n

\"SpectrogramsSpectrograms of signature whistles of 269 individual bottlenose dolphins recorded in Sarasota.\u00a0Figure created by Frants Jensen, with sound files from Laela Sayigh<\/p>\n

Signature whistles and \u2018motherese\u2019<\/p>\n

The Sarasota Dolphin Whistle Database has proved to be a rich resource for understanding dolphin communication. For instance, we have discovered that some calves develop signature whistles\u00a0similar to those of their mothers<\/a>, but many do not, raising questions about what factors influence signature whistle development.<\/p>\n

We have also found that once developed,\u00a0signature whistles are highly stable<\/a>\u00a0over an animal\u2019s lifetime, especially for females. Males often form strong pair bonds with another adult male, and in some instances,\u00a0their whistles become more similar to one another<\/a>\u00a0over time. We are still trying to understand when and why this occurs.<\/p>\n

Dolphin mothers\u00a0modify their signature whistles when communicating with their calves<\/a>\u00a0by increasing the maximum frequency, or pitch. This is similar to human caregivers using a higher-pitched voice when communicating with young children \u2013 a phenomenon known as \u201cmotherese.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also similar to humans is how dolphins will initiate contact with another dolphin by imitating their signature whistle \u2013 what we call a signature whistle copy. This is similar to how you would use someone\u2019s name to call out to them.<\/p>\n

Our team is interested in finding out if dolphins also copy whistles of others who aren\u2019t present, potentially talking about them. We have seen evidence of this in our recordings of dolphins during health assessments, which provide a rare context to document this phenomenon convincingly. But we still have more work to do to confirm that these are more than chance similarities in whistles.<\/p>\n

Shared whistle types<\/p>\n

Another exciting development has been\u00a0our recent discovery of shared whistle types<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 ones that are used by multiple animals and that are not signature whistles. We call these non-signature whistles.<\/p>\n

I could hardly believe my ears when I first discovered a repeated, shared non-signature whistle type being produced by multiple dolphins in response to sounds we play back to them through an underwater speaker. We had previously believed that these non-signature whistles were somewhat random, but now I was hearing many different dolphins making a similar whistle type.<\/p>\n

Our team originally had been using the playbacks to try\u00a0to determine whether dolphins use \u201cvoice cues\u201d<\/a>\u00a0to recognize each other \u2013 similar to how you can recognize the voice of someone you know. Although we found that dolphins did not use voice cues, our discovery of shared non-signature whistle types has led to an entirely new research direction.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe author listens to dolphin whistles on a boat in Sarasota.\u00a0Jonathan Bird from the film \u2018Call of the Dolphins\u2019\/Oceanic Research Group, Inc.<\/p>\n

So far, I\u2019ve identified at least 20 different shared non-signature whistle types, and I am continuing to build our catalog. We are hoping that artificial intelligence methods may help us categorize these whistle types in the future.<\/p>\n

To understand how these shared non-signature whistle types function, we are carrying out more playback experiments, filming the dolphins\u2019 responses with drones. We\u2019ve found that one such whistle often leads the dolphins to swim away, suggesting a possible alarm-type function. We have also found that another type might be an expression of surprise, as we have seen animals produce it when they hear unexpected stimuli.<\/p>\n

More difficult, more interesting<\/p>\n

So far, the main takeaway from our experiments has been that dolphin communication is complex and that there are not going to be one-size-fits-all responses to any non-signature whistle type. This isn\u2019t surprising, given that, like us, these animals have complicated social relationships that could affect how they respond to different sound types.<\/p>\n

For instance, when you hear someone call your name, you may respond differently if you are with a group of people or alone, or if you recently had an argument with someone, or if you\u2019re hungry and on your way to eat.<\/p>\n

Our team has a lot more work ahead to sample as many dolphins in as many contexts as possible, such as different ages, sexes, group compositions and activities.<\/p>\n

This makes my job more difficult \u2013 and far more interesting. I feel lucky every day I am able to spend working on the seemingly infinite number of fascinating research questions about dolphin communication that await answers.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on The Conversation. You can read it here. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Human fascination with\u00a0bottlenose dolphins\u00a0goes back thousands of years, at least as early as\u00a0Greek mythology. But it wasn\u2019t until…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[183500,183501,183502,183503,183504,183505,183506,2851,95469,183507,113398,183508,183509,183510,183511,183512,52516,83028,125833,90,30606,56,183513,54,55,4407,4416,183514,20525],"class_list":{"0":"post-529700","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-2019-photo-contest","9":"tag-2019-wildlife-photos","10":"tag-animal-captions","11":"tag-animal-expressions","12":"tag-animal-humor","13":"tag-animal-memes","14":"tag-animal-photo-contest","15":"tag-animals","16":"tag-comedy-wildlife-photography-awards","17":"tag-conservation-photography","18":"tag-cute-animals","19":"tag-funny-animal-photos","20":"tag-funny-nature-moments","21":"tag-funny-otters","22":"tag-hilarious-animal-pictures","23":"tag-hilarious-animals","24":"tag-nature-photography","25":"tag-otters","26":"tag-past-events","27":"tag-science","28":"tag-squirrels","29":"tag-uk","30":"tag-underwater-animals","31":"tag-united-kingdom","32":"tag-unitedkingdom","33":"tag-wildlife","34":"tag-wildlife-conservation","35":"tag-wildlife-humor","36":"tag-wildlife-photography"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}