For 27 years, marine biologist Denise Herzing and colleagues have been regular visitors in the Atlantic Ocean home of a 200-member pod of spotted dolphins living north of the Bahama Islands.
Understanding the relationships between the members of the pod is key to unraveling what their dozens of whistles, clicks and other signals mean.
"The large goal of this project is to tell the story of what it's like to be a dolphin," Herzing, a researcher with Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton and the founder and head of the Wild Dolphin Project, told Discovery News.
But being a curious and intelligent species, the dolphins weren't content to just let the scientists take their underwater videos and record their sounds.
Dolphins are known to have sophisticated brains. They also have a complex social structure, as they form alliances and share duties. When trained, they have the ability to pick up language.
"There are times that they play games with us in the water," Herzing said. "This particular group seems to be curious about us, probably because we're in the water analyzing them."
They might be able to help us with that, provided humanity's destructive impact on the ocean ecosystem doesn't kill them off. To read the rest of the article, click here.