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Scientists Discover a 'Phonetic Alphabet' Used by Sperm Whales, Moving One Step Closer to Decoding Their Chatter (www.smithsonianmag.com)

submitted 3 months ago by ooli@lemmy.world to c/science@lemmy.world

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[-] psoul@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago

This reminds be of the book Hyperion in which there was this paradise ocean world planet, Maui-Covenant. Maui-Covenant had motile isles, giant plant/animal moving islands. They were herded by dolphins. Humans made a device that could translate and talk to the dolphins. All the dolphins committed suicide when the hegemony of man (some sort of capitalistic state) arrived and ruined the planet to extract all the oil.

[-] TIMMAY@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

That part is so eerie and so cool, they ask the dolphins questions but the answers are so alien to them that they realize they just dont have to context to understand them. They miss shark.... edit: also if you haven't read chasm city by alastair reynolds, I heavily recommend it and it also has some dolphins that are being transported to a new colony world with humans

[-] elbarto777@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Would you mind giving examples of these "alien" conversations?

I don't think I'll read this book, so I don't mind if there are spoilers..

[-] TIMMAY@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I can try but they weren't cryptic or anything, just didnt make sense to the humans. The humans were swimming underwater and using some tech to translate. They asked the dolphins if they missed the oceans of earth or something to that effect and the dolphins mention that they miss the "great voices" which is implied to be a reference to whales. There were also some casual-seeming phrases that were essentially just word salad to the humans, and they compared it to speaking to a 1 year old human. They end the interaction with the dolphins saying over and over that there are no sharks there and that they miss them, which makes no sense to the narrator so he turns off the translator with the realization that he just can't understand what they mean because they share no mutual contexts. edit: also presumably part of the problem was that the human's questions were just as context-less to the dolphins as the dolphin answers were to the hupeople