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Cymascope machine translates dolphin-speak into Egyptian-like hieroglyphics
UK-based acoustics engineer John Reid has been working on a machine for a decade that may be able to translate dolphin talk in much the same way that we decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics. Called the Cymascope, the device analyzes the noises the mammals make and shapes them into a map of reproducible sound patterns, termed CymaGlyphs.
"Until now the complexity of a dolphin's speech has been virtually impossible to translate," Reid told the News & Star. "The Cymascope can pinpoint the structure of sound and simplify this into a basic pattern of speech."
His Cymascope uses a basin of water monitored by a video camera, and a few other odds and ends, including sand, brass plates and a violin bow. "What we're going to do is excite the water by introducing the whale song, then look at what happens on the TV monitor," Reid said, speaking to The Sun. "What you see is the image of the sound."
So, is he just doing this because he couldn't get enough of Darwin from Sea Quest DSV or Jones from Johnny Mnemonic? "Our ultimate aim," Reid said, "is to speak to dolphins with a basic vocabulary of dolphin sounds and to understand their responses."
The Sun and News & Star, via The Raw Feed
By Oops at 9:00 PM ON 04/13/09
"so long and thanks for all the fish"
By Shimrod at 9:31 PM ON 04/13/09
Good grief, is this rubbish is still going on? sounds like a scam to me - as a dolphin researcher/trainer of many years experience there are simply too many variables, dolphins have dialects,names and we have identified many calls over the years - food calls -alarm calls etc, all differing over species!
Dolphins call one another by name and the sheer bandwidth they use just for this simple task is beyond the frequency range of most hydrophones.
Id put this 'cymascope' in the same quack file as the 'regenerator' below
By Me at 2:34 AM ON 04/14/09
As a Dolphin, djiemeoi sanv0we9fjfs sijvejn en0[ign
vn[p9re
By ShamBot at 4:50 PM ON 04/23/09
It sounds more like a FFT of the sounds the dolphins are making, specific patterns seen in the imaging could correspond to individual units of meaning -> words, phrases, what ever dolphins use. It would only be study-able in a small group, yes, but the study could be expanded to other pods if successful.
We know what the bandwidth is on the sounds dolphins can make, so they could use a underwater microphone built for that specific purpose . As most are made for only the range we can hear it would have to be specially constructed 5-85 kHz vs human 0.02kHz to 20kHz.
In a single human sound, say a /a/ there is one dense concentration of harmonics around 1450Hz. In some sounds like /s/ or /sh/ there is a very high frequency band above 4000Hz. We don't need all that noise to know one is saying a /s/ or /sh/ sound. In fact, telephones cut off high frequencies to limit the amount of data streamed. When this occurs the /s/ or /sh/ sounds quieter and we rely more on timing or amplitude or voicing to differentiate them from other sounds.
In dolphins, and this is illogical, but I would assume that they would rely on harmonics to differentiate complex sounds as we, and many other animals do? (anyone else remember a voicing study in chipmunks or something?) It is a starting point but if the audiologists try to get syntax and semantics based off many cues (voicing, timing, loudness, breaks), not just harmonics we won't need 100kHz microphones.
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ShamBot:
It sounds more like a FFT of the sounds the dolphins are making, specific patterns seen in the imaging could corres...More »