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Well, now we're going to the Bahamas to meet

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a remarkable group of dolphins that I've been working with

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in the wild for the last 28 years.

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Now I'm interested in dolphins because of their large brains

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and what they might be doing with all that brainpower

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in the wild.

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And we know they use some of that brainpower

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for just living complicated lives,

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but what do we really know about dolphin intelligence?

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Well, we know a few things.

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We know that their brain-to-body ratio,

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which is a physical measure of intelligence,

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is second only to humans.

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Cognitively, they can understand

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artificially-created languages.

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And they pass self-awareness tests in mirrors.

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And in some parts of the world, they use tools,

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like sponges to hunt fish.

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But there's one big question left:

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do they have a language, and if so,

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what are they talking about?

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So decades ago, not years ago,

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I set out to find a place in the world

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where I could observe dolphins underwater

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to try to crack the code of their communication system.

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Now in most parts of the world, the water's pretty murky,

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so it's very hard to observe animals underwater,

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but I found a community of dolphins that live

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in these beautiful, clear, shallow sandbanks of the Bahamas

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which are just east of Florida.

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And they spend their daytime resting and socializing

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in the safety of the shallows, but at night,

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they go off the edge and hunt in deep water.

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Now, it's not a bad place to be a researcher, either.

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So we go out for about five months every summer

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in a 20-meter catamaran, and we live, sleep and work

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at sea for weeks at a time.

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My main tool is an underwater video with a hydrophone,

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which is an underwater microphone, and this is so

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I can correlate sound and behavior.

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And most of our work's pretty non-invasive.

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We try to follow dolphin etiquette while we're in the water,

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since we're actually observing them physically in the water.

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Now, Atlantic spotted dolphins are a really nice species

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to work with for a couple of reasons.

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They're born without spots, and they get spots with age,

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and they go through pretty distinct developmental phases,

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so that's fun to track their behavior.

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And by about the age of 15, they're fully spotted black and white.

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Now the mother you see here is Mugsy.

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She's 35 years old in this shot,

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but dolphins can actually live into their early 50s.

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And like all the dolphins in our community,

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we photographed Mugsy and tracked her little spots

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and nicks in her dorsal fin,

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and also the unique spot patterns

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as she matured over time.

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Now, young dolphins learn a lot as they're growing up,

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and they use their teenage years to practice social skills,

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and at about the age of nine, the females

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become sexually mature, so they can get pregnant,

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and the males mature quite a bit later,

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at around 15 years of age.

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And dolphins are very promiscuous,

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and so we have to determine who the fathers are,

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so we do paternity tests by collecting fecal material

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out of the water and extracting DNA.

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So what that means is, after 28 years,

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we are tracking three generations,

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including grandmothers and grandfathers.

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Now, dolphins are natural acousticians.

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They make sounds 10 times as high

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and hear sounds 10 times as high as we do.

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But they have other communication signals they use.

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They have good vision, so they use body postures to communicate.

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They have taste, not smell.

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And they have touch.

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And sound can actually be felt in the water,

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because the acoustic impedance of tissue and water's about the same.

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So dolphins can buzz and tickle each other at a distance.

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Now, we do know some things about how sounds are used

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with certain behaviors.

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Now, the signature whistle is a whistle

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that's specific to an individual dolphin, and it's like a name. (Dolphin whistling noises)

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And this is the best-studied sound,

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because it's easy to measure, really,

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and you'd find this whistle when mothers and calves

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are reuniting, for example.

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Another well studied sound are echolocation clicks.

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This is the dolphin's sonar. (Dolphin echolocation noises)

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And they use these clicks to hunt and feed.

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But they can also tightly pack these clicks together

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into buzzes and use them socially.

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For example, males will stimulate a female

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during a courtship chase.

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You know, I've been buzzed in the water.

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(Laughter)

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Don't tell anyone. It's a secret.

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And you can really feel the sound. That was my point with that.

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(Laughter)

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So dolphins are also political animals,

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so they have to resolve conflicts.

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(Dolphin noises)

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And they use these burst-pulsed sounds as well as

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their head-to-head behaviors when they're fighting.

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And these are very unstudied sounds

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because they're hard to measure.

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Now this is some video of a typical dolphin fight.

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(Dolphin noises)

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So you're going to see two groups,

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and you're going to see the head-to-head posturing,

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some open mouths,

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lots of squawking.

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There's a bubble.

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And basically, one of these groups will kind of back off

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and everything will resolve fine,

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and it doesn't really escalate into violence too much.

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Now, in the Bahamas, we also have resident bottlenose

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that interact socially with the spotted dolphins.

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For example, they babysit each other's calves.

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The males have dominance displays that they use

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when they're chasing each other's females.

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And the two species actually form temporary alliances

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when they're chasing sharks away.

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And one of the mechanisms they use to communicate

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their coordination is synchrony.

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They synchronize their sounds and their body postures

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to look bigger and sound stronger.

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(Dolphins noises)

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Now, these are bottlenose dolphins,

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and you'll see them starting to synchronize

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their behavior and their sounds.

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(Dolphin noises)

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You see, they're synchronizing with their partner

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as well as the other dyad.

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I wish I was that coordinated.

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Now, it's important to remember that you're only hearing

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the human-audible parts of dolphin sounds,

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and dolphins make ultrasonic sounds,

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and we use special equipment in the water

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to collect these sounds.

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Now, researchers have actually measured whistle complexity

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using information theory,

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and whistles rate very high relative to even human languages.

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But burst-pulsed sounds is a bit of a mystery.

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Now, these are three spectragrams.

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Two are human words, and one is a dolphin vocalizing.

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So just take a guess in your mind which one is the dolphin.

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Now, it turns out burst-pulsed sounds actually look

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a bit like human phonemes.

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Now, one way to crack the code

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is to interpret these signals and figure out what they mean,

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but it's a difficult job, and we actually don't have a Rosetta Stone yet.

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But a second way to crack the code

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is to develop some technology,

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an interface to do two-way communication,

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and that's what we've been trying to do in the Bahamas

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and in real time.

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Now, scientists have used keyboard interfaces

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to try to bridge the gap with species

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including chimpanzees and dolphins.

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This underwater keyboard in Orlando, Florida,

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at the Epcot Center, was actually

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the most sophisticated ever two-way interface designed

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for humans and dolphins to work together under the water

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and exchange information.

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So we wanted to develop an interface like this

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in the Bahamas, but in a more natural setting.

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And one of the reasons we thought we could do this

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is because the dolphins were starting to show us

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a lot of mutual curiosity.

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They were spontaneously mimicking our vocalizations

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and our postures, and they were also inviting us

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into dolphin games.

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Now, dolphins are social mammals, so they love to play,

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and one of their favorite games is to drag seaweed,

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or sargassum in this case, around.

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And they're very adept. They like to drag it

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and drop it from appendage to appendage.

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Now in this footage, the adult is Caroh.

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She's 25 years old here, and this is her newborn, Cobalt,

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and he's just learning how to play this game.

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(Dolphin noises)

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She's kind of teasing him and taunting him.

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He really wants that sargassum.

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Now, when dolphins solicit humans for this game,

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they'll often sink vertically in the water,

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and they'll have a little sargassum on their flipper,

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and they'll sort of nudge it and drop it sometimes

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on the bottom and let us go get it,

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and then we'll have a little seaweed keep away game.

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But when we don't dive down and get it,

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they'll bring it to the surface

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and they'll sort of wave it in front of us on their tail

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and drop it for us like they do their calves,

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and then we'll pick it up and have a game.

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And so we started thinking, well, wouldn't it be neat

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to build some technology that would allow the dolphins

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to request these things in real time, their favorite toys?

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So the original vision was to have a keyboard

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hanging from the boat attached to a computer,

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and the divers and dolphins would activate the keys

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on the keypad and happily exchange information

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and request toys from each other.

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But we quickly found out that dolphins simply

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were not going to hang around the boat using a keyboard.

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They've got better things to do in the wild.

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They might do it in captivity, but in the wild --

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So we built a portable keyboard that we could push through the water,

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and we labeled four objects they like to play with,

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the scarf, rope, sargassum, and also had a bow ride,

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which is a fun activity for a dolphin. (Whistle)

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And that's the scarf whistle,

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which is also associated with a visual symbol.

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And these are artificially created whistles.

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They're outside the dolphin's normal repertoire,

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but they're easily mimicked by the dolphins.

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And I spent four years with my colleagues Adam Pack and Fabienne Delfour,

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working out in the field with this keyboard

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using it with each other to do requests for toys

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while the dolphins were watching.

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And the dolphins could get in on the game.

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They could point at the visual object,

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or they could mimic the whistle.

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Now this is video of a session.

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The diver here has a rope toy,

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and I'm on the keyboard on the left,

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and I've just played the rope key,

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and that's the request for the toy from the human.

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So I've got the rope, I'm diving down,

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and I'm basically trying to get the dolphin's attention,

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because they're kind of like little kids.

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You have to keep their attention.

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I'm going to drop the rope, see if they come over.

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Here they come,

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and then they're going to pick up the rope

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and drag it around as a toy.

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Now, I'm at the keyboard on the left,

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and this is actually the first time that we tried this.

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I'm going to try to request this toy, the rope toy,

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from the dolphins using the rope sound.

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Let's see if they might actually understand what that means.

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(Whistle)

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That's the rope whistle.

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Up come the dolphins,

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and drop off the rope, yay. Wow.

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(Applause)

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So this is only once.

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We don't know for sure if they really understand the function of the whistles.

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Okay, so here's a second toy in the water.

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This is a scarf toy, and I'm trying to lead the dolphin

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over to the keyboard to show her

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the visual and the acoustic signal.

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Now this dolphin, we call her "the scarf thief,"

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because over the years she's absconded

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with about 12 scarves.

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In fact, we think she has a boutique somewhere in the Bahamas.

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So I'm reaching over. She's got the scarf on her right side.

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And we try to not touch the animals too much,

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we really don't want to over-habituate them.

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And I'm trying to lead her back to the keyboard.

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And the diver there is going to activate the scarf sound

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to request the scarf.

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So I try to give her the scarf.

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Whoop. Almost lost it.

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But this is the moment where everything becomes possible.

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The dolphin's at the keyboard.

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You've got full attention.

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And this sometimes went on for hours.

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And I wanted to share this video with you

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not to show you any big breakthroughs,

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because they haven't happened yet,

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but to show you the level of intention and focus

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that these dolphins have, and interest in the system.

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And because of this, we really decided we needed

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some more sophisticated technology.

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So we joined forces with Georgia Tech,

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with Thad Starner's wearable computing group,

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to build us an underwater wearable computer

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that we're calling CHAT. [CHAT: Cetacean Hearing And Telemetry]

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Now, instead of pushing a keyboard through the water,

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the diver's wearing the complete system, and it's acoustic only,

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so basically the diver activates the sounds on a keypad

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on the forearm,

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the sounds go out through an underwater speaker,

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if a dolphin mimics the whistle

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or a human plays the whistle, the sounds come in

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and are localized by two hydrophones.

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The computer can localize who requested the toy

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if there's a word match.

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And the real power of the system is in the real-time

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sound recognition, so we can respond to the dolphins

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quickly and accurately.

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And we're at prototype stage, but this is how we hope it will play out.

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So Diver A and Diver B both have a wearable computer

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and the dolphin hears the whistle as a whistle,

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the diver hears the whistle as a whistle in the water,

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but also as a word through bone conduction.

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So Diver A plays the scarf whistle

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or Diver B plays the sargassum whistle

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to request a toy from whoever has it.

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What we hope will happen is that the dolphin mimics the whistle,

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and if Diver A has the sargassum, if that's the sound

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that was played and requested,

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then the diver will give the sargassum to the requesting dolphin

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and they'll swim away happily into the sunset

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playing sargassum for forever.

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Now, how far can this kind of communication go?

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Well, CHAT is designed specifically to empower the dolphins

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to request things from us.

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It's designed to really be two-way.

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Now, will they learn to mimic the whistles functionally?

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We hope so and we think so.

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But as we decode their natural sounds,

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we're also planning to put those back into the computerized system.

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For example, right now we can put their own signature whistles

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in the computer and request to interact with a specific dolphin.

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Likewise, we can create our own whistles,

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our own whistle names, and let the dolphins

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request specific divers to interact with.

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Now it may be that all our mobile technology

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will actually be the same technology that helps us

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communicate with another species down the road.

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In the case of a dolphin, you know, it's a species that,

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well, they're probably close to our intelligence in many ways

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and we might not be able to admit that right now,

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but they live in quite a different environment,

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and you still have to bridge the gap with the sensory systems.

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I mean, imagine what it would be like

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to really understand the mind

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of another intelligent species on the planet.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)