Free The Dolphin in the Mirror by Diana Reiss Page B

the body), and are transmitted to the inner ears.
    The numbers here are impressive. Dolphins can produce from as few as eight clicks a second, which sounds like a creaking door, to as many as two thousand clicks a second, which sounds like a high-pitched buzz. Individual clicks are wide-band sounds, composed of a rich mixture of low- and high-frequency wavelengths. The low-frequency clicks are longer wavelengths; they travel farther and give the dolphin a general overview of an object. The high-frequency clicks are shorter wavelengths; they don't travel as far but they provide more details. One might expect the returning echoes to produce a confusing cacophony impossible to interpret. But in fact, the dolphin receives a clear acoustic image of its surroundings. Dolphins can almost literally see with sound. And as I mentioned above, the exquisite degree of image discrimination has navy technicians salivating. To give just one example: at a distance of thirty feet, a dolphin can detect a few tenths of a millimeter's difference (about the thickness of a fingernail) in the density of the walls of two metal cylinders.
    In addition to being highly sensitive to sound and visual images, dolphins are highly sensitive to touch. Touch plays an important role in human social interactions and relationships, and the same seems to be true in dolphin societies. Dolphin social behavior frequently involves tactile interactions such as pectoral-fin rubbing, pectoral-to-pectoral fin contact while swimming (it looks like handholding!), and body rubbing. It's been reported that the level of tactile sensitivity on some areas of the dolphin body is comparable to the sensitivity of our fingertips and lips.
    Imagine being able to control your breathing and hold your breath for astonishingly long periods; imagine sleeping half a brain at a time; imagine acoustically "seeing" finely detailed images of distant objects in complete darkness with your biological sonar. It has been suggested, although not verified, that dolphins have the ability to image the internal bodies of others, so imagine having x-ray vision and being able to scan the internal bodies of your family members and friends; you'd know about all their pregnancies, injuries, and illnesses. Imagine, too, that your environment is the ocean and that you are the king or queen of speed. That—in part, at least, and from a limited viewpoint—is what it might be like for a human to be a dolphin. But how can anyone really know what it's like for a dolphin to be a dolphin? My goal was to get a glimpse of that by opening a window into the dolphin mind.
    ***
    When my month at Little Torch Key was over, I hadn't discovered any significant insights into the cognitive or communicative abilities of dolphins. But I had accomplished my research goals for the project: I'd learned the technical aspects of recording dolphin vocalizations using specialized underwater equipment, and I had a car full of large reels of tape with recordings of those vocalizations to take back to the university for analysis. I had put the equipment to good use, recording their different sounds and testing to see if Dal or Suwa used specific types of vocalizations when fed or when presented with a particular object, such as a ball, a ring, or a seashell. I had not collected publishable observations during that month, yet the experience was an invaluable foundation for work that, I hoped, would eventually merit publication in scientific journals. The experience also left me with more questions than I'd started with, and for that I was thrilled. For a scientist, knowing the questions to ask is as important as finding the answers (and sometimes more important).
    On a personal level, Dal and Suwa provided my first encounter, and I experienced a sense of their intelligence. It wasn't just the experience of being held in an uncanny gaze; it was a sense of a familiar presence in these creatures, a manifestation of the pattern that connects.