Why are dolphins so remarkable? Dolphins are aquatic mammals Dolphins only eat meat

Are dolphins direct descendants of alien creatures?

Chinese scholar Xu Sen Sung argues that dolphins are direct descendants of alien creatures... The scientist was able to enter into telepathic contact with dolphins. And they informed him of their origin.

The report of the Chinese scientists from Beijing was met with a fair amount of skepticism by the public.

According to recent research, the IQ level of some dolphins exceeds that of the average person. The dolphin's brain is practically no different from ours in terms of complexity, and many scientists are still trying to unravel its abilities.

“Their ancestors came to our earth 100 thousand years ago, fleeing the pollution of their planet, - says the scientist. spaceships disappeared long ago. But the bitter irony is that now the pollution has also touched our Earth.

American biologists from Emory University cite facts that dolphins existed for a very long time, there were no people on Earth then in the project, even in the form of monkeys.

Some kind of mutation has occurred, says research leader Lori Marino. - The reasons for it are not yet clear. By the skulls of ancient dolphins, we only managed to establish the approximate time when they began to "grow wiser". It turned out that the intellectual evolution of dolphins began 47 million years ago.

It seems that they still have a meaningful language, which is almost as complex as human. We have not yet been given to understand it. But it is already known that the whistles, clicks and gnashing of the "intellectuals of the sea" follow in certain series. And they do not just resemble words, but carry some information. This was shown by the mathematical analysis of their "speech" carried out at the University of California (USA). In addition, besides humans, only dolphins recognize themselves in the mirror.

On the one hand, such abilities are not surprising. After all, the brain of dolphins is comparable in relative size to that of a human. And by weight - even larger: 1.7 kilograms on average against our one and a half kilogram. And they have twice as many convolutions. But how did dolphins get such a large and sinuous brain? Why? What for? American biologists from Emory University tried to answer these questions. And .. did not answer.

Dolphins first lived on land. Then for some reason they went to sea. They lost their arms and legs, but grew wiser. Although not immediately, but 35 million years ago, their brains suddenly grew dramatically.

The next leap took place after another 20 million years - the brain again became larger and in its parameters approached the current human one. In fact, dolphins were the only such brainy creatures on Earth at the time.

More or less intelligent man appeared only after 10 million years, starting evolution with a much smaller brain. But he managed to become the crown of creation. At least we think so.

There is a hypothesis according to which nature does not tolerate more than one type of intelligent creatures. But she is quite capable of experimenting, consistently selecting the most suitable candidate available.

"Big brothers" - dinosaurs - did not manage to survive. "Average" - dolphins - wagged away from progress. So I had to rely on people. But did our predecessors manage to create at least some kind of civilization? Unknown ...

The secrets of some are hidden in the thickness of the earth's rocks, others - at the bottom of the ocean. There, however, they find strange "technical" details like bolts, which are tens of millions of years old. But for serious scientists, these are not arguments.

Enthusiasts don't need to find anything special. They believe that the lizards have nevertheless become intelligent - they had a dozen or two million years for this. And then they flew away from the Earth, which was unfavorable at that time, to another planet.

The dolphins remained, but for some reason they degraded (is it so?) - for a long time they have not been engaged in creation, like younger human brothers, but lead an idle lifestyle: they fish, swim. Why a big brain for this?

Both adults and children love dolphins. These mammals seem to be incredibly intelligent, and interacting with them even has a therapeutic effect! Learn ten interesting facts about them.

There are over thirty species of dolphins

Dolphins are marine animals found all over the world. There are more than thirty types of them. All of them are predators, feeding on fish and squid, and sometimes even seals and other marine animals. Most species inhabit the ocean. But there are also five species that live in rivers. Interestingly, most likely they did not descend from a common ancestor, but developed in parallel. Some river dolphins are closer to oceanic dolphins than others river species... Research has shown that river dolphins evolved from oceanic dolphins that migrated to fresh water due to competition with other species.

Dolphins can be from a meter to ten in length.

The smallest dolphin of all lives on Maui - its length is about a meter. The largest are the killer whales, also known as killer whales. This name is erroneous, because these are not whales, but a species of dolphin.

Dolphin ancestors began living in water fifty-five million years ago

Nature often hides amazing facts. The researchers managed to learn the incredible - dolphins evolved from land mammals that began to live in the ocean about fifty million years ago. It was so long ago that other species that descended from those land creatures are giraffes and hippos. The skeleton of dolphins contains reduced bones that were once paws. They are present in all kinds of dolphins. Interestingly, whales seem quite similar to dolphins, but they are completely different.

Killer whales are dolphins ten meters in size

Most surprising fact about dolphins is that they include killer whales. Killer whales are found all over the world from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Their traits are so different from those of dolphins because their last common ancestor was eleven million years ago. Since then, killer whales have evolved in their own way, different from other species. Some scientists distinguish from three to five subspecies of these creatures, which differ in external and some other features. However, it is possible that the differences are simply formed under the influence of the habitat - in coastal waters, in the deep sea, or during migration between the two territories.

Dolphins from the Amazon can turn their heads ninety degrees and have a goatee

During adaptation to underwater life, these creatures have lost the hair that their ancestors had. But when dolphins are just born, they remain around their mouths. Then she disappears - unless it's about the Amazon dolphins. This species is distinguished by the hair that remains at the mouth for life. The fur helps to better determine the direction in the dark waters of the jungle, making dolphins easier to find their prey. In addition, this species has special neck bones - the Amazonian dolphin can turn its head ninety degrees.

Dolphins hear ten times better than humans

Dolphins have incredibly keen senses that make them such great hunters. They have excellent eyesight as well as incredibly keen hearing. With the help of a variety of clicks and squeaks, they find their prey thanks to echolocation. They pick up all sounds, like a perfect radar, with a special organ located in the lower jaw. It is a fat-filled chamber that connects the jaw to the inner ear. All vibrations are transmitted through the jaw to the ear.

Dolphins only eat meat

Dolphins seem to be the cutest creatures of all the inhabitants of the sea. Even killer whales seem cute to some. It is not uncommon to see children's toys in the form of these predatory creatures. Don't be fooled - these are carnivores that exclusively feed on meat! They usually fish, but they can eat other creatures, from squid to seals, and killer whales can even kill whales that are larger in size. There is not a single predator that can cope with the killer whale - this is the harshest inhabitant of the ocean. Even riverine species are exceptionally carnivorous. Humans are usually not of interest to dolphins, but there have been cases where killer whales ate their trainers when kept in zoos.

Dolphins gather in large schools

They are very sociable animals. It is known that they can communicate with a variety of sounds. Each has its own whistle that others will recognize. They even have names! In addition, these mammals gather in large groups that not only hunt, but also just live together. Groups of up to a thousand are known.

Bottlenose dolphins teach each other how to use tools

In addition to a wide range of sounds, which some scientists compare to language, bottlenose dolphins can use instruments. Considering the presence of both language and ability to use objects, we can say that this species of dolphin has a culture. Bottlenose dolphins live in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. They hunt fish in a special way among the sand and stones at the bottom of the ocean. In order not to damage their mouths on stones, dolphins loosen the sand with a sponge, which they hold in their teeth, frightening the fish with this. This tactic is passed from the bottlenose mother to the cubs. Other species know how to use sticks and seaweed during mating games... Obviously, these are the most intellectually developed animals on the planet after humans.

In the lagoon of Santa Catarina, people and dolphins fish together

People knew how to cooperate with these mammals since the days of the Roman Empire. Fishermen can fish with them. Here's how it works: Dolphins chase a school of fish into the net. When a fish is caught, the fishermen share a portion of the catch with their colleagues. This technique is used to this day in Brazil, in the Santa Catarina lagoon. The United States Navy has a training program for these creatures. They can be trained for military action. Mammals can find mines and rescue people drowning in the sea. They were used to participate in the war in the middle of the last century, although the exact data on this remains classified.

Dolphins have long been one of the most beloved water animals for humans. And this is not surprising! Dolphins are the most peaceful, intelligent and friendly creatures on the planet! When we talk about dolphins, we always imagine trained cetaceans performing acrobatic stunts before our eyes. However, there are countries that are categorically against dolphinariums, believing that these smart creatures should not live outside natural environment, after all, and so from year to year, the number of dolphins decreases significantly. And only the human factor is to blame for this.

A bit of history

It is assumed that the sperm whale, whale, dolphin, including the sea pig, descended from the same ancestors - mammals that inhabited the earth millions of years ago, but were not purely land animals, but rather liked to hunt and live in the water. These are mesonychids - omnivorous creatures with hooves, like those of horses and cows, with a predatory, wolfish appearance. According to approximate data, the Mesonychids lived for more than sixty million years, and they inhabited the modern continent of Asia, part Mediterranean Sea(in ancient times it was the Tethys Sea). These animals, most likely, ate any medium-sized aquatic animals and any fish that then inhabited numerous swamps off the coast.

And due to the fact that the mesonichids spent most of their life in any body of water, their appearance gradually began to develop in breadth, flow around, the limbs turned into fins, while the hair on the skin began to disappear, and subcutaneous fat developed and strengthened under it. To make it easier for animals to breathe, the nostrils ceased to perform their original function: in the process of evolution, they became a vital organ for the animal, since creatures could breathe through them, and all thanks to their displacement up the head.

Even if for a long time it was believed that the ancestors of cetaceans, including dolphins, were indeed mesonychids, nevertheless, most of all they "borrowed" from hippos, and this is proved by numerous molecular studies. Dolphins are not just descendants of these cloven-hoofed animals, they are still deeply similar and are part of their group. Until now, hippos and hippos live mainly in water, on land they are only a couple of hours to eat. That is why scientists suggest that hippos are one of the evolutionary branches of cetaceans. It's just that the whales went further than the hippos, they generally abandoned life on land and completely switched to life in the water.

And if it seems strange to you that hippos and hooves are related to legless cetaceans, then we want to give another version of taxonomy, for example, land animals with 4 legs that evolved from fish. Simply, we should not be surprised that long since our civilization appeared, the evolution of dolphins proceeded so rapidly.

Description of dolphins

Dolphins are large waterfowl that breathe air, in contrast to fish, the function of respiration of which is provided by the gills. Sea dolphins are in the water all 24 hours, and here they give birth to little dolphins. Since the female herself feeds her babies, therefore they are warm-blooded creatures, mammals.

Unlike their relatives - whales, dolphins are more beautiful creatures. Except for the sharp teeth in their intelligent and friendly gaze, one cannot find any sinister intrigues. So, an adult dolphin can be 2.5 meters long, weighs only three hundred kilograms. Whereas it can be nine meters long and weigh eight tons. Males are always larger than females by at least 20 centimeters. They have more than eighty teeth. The color of the trunk and fins is black or gray, while the tummy is white.

The largest organ The cetacean dolphin has a brain that is amazingly awake all the time the dolphin is sleeping. The brain allows the animal to breathe all the time, even when it is asleep: this way the dolphin will not drown, because the supply of oxygen for cetaceans is very important for life.

Scientists have called dolphin skin a natural miracle. This is their wealth! When dolphins calmly extinguish water turbulence, when the body needs to slow down a little.

It is interesting!
Submarine designers have been looking closely at how dolphins swim for a long time. Thanks to the dolphins, the designers managed to create artificial skin for the submarine.

Dolphins: what they eat and how they hunt

Shellfish, various types of fish and other aquatic animals are the food of the dolphin. Interestingly, dolphins can eat a lot of fish in a day. Dolphins hunt fish in schools, and each of its members can eat up to thirty kilograms... All this is due to the fact that dolphins are animals that, at too low temperature regimes of oceanic or sea ​​water(below zero degrees Celsius) you must always maintain your own temperature to be optimal. And it helps warm-blooded dolphins in this thick subcutaneous fat, which is constantly replenished due to a huge amount of food. That is why dolphins are always on the move, hunting, and only at night allow themselves a little rest.

A flock of dolphins can very quickly catch up with a fish flock, because in the sea these animals are aces. If dolphins are already near the beach, they instantly form half rings around the fish in order to push their future food to shallow water, and eat there. As soon as the dolphins take fish shoals captive, they do not immediately rush at them, and then continue to keep them in a circle so that they do not swim away, and each member of the flock could have lunch or dinner with their favorite food.

To see the dolphins, it is enough to find a school of fish. Similarly, these cetaceans will live where there are many, many fish. In summer, dolphins can be found in full in Azov, when mullet and anchovy move to the sea to feed. Dolphins also swim close to the Caucasian shores in early autumn, when the fish begin to migrate in herds.

As you can see, it is rare to see one dolphin in the ocean, since these animals are very friendly, they love to live in flocks, hunt together and even jump beautifully and perform their tricks harmoniously, dolphins know how together with their comrades. Whatever it was, but dolphins never got along with killer whales. Also, there are still poachers who hunt these friendly earthly creatures. Despite everything, dolphins trust people and even know how to communicate not only with each other, but also with other animals. They will never leave their comrades in trouble. And in case of severe danger, they can even help a person. How many legends and stories exist in the world about dolphins saving lives. Some even watched as the dolphins pushed boats to the shores, which are blown away by the winds.

Dolphin breeding

Unlike other inhabitants of the aquatic world, dolphins are the only ones that are born with tails, not heads. And this is so. Loving mothers do not leave their cubs even two or three years after birth.

It is interesting!
Dolphins are incredibly sensual and compassionate animals. A little dolphin, even after it becomes completely independent, an adult male or female, never, under any circumstances, abandons its parents.

And dolphins feel great affection and love not only for their own brethren, but even for whales, other animals (they don't like killer whales) and people. After the female and the male give birth to cubs, they never part, even after they acquire numerous cubs. Who, if not dolphins, know how to love their cubs, gently and lovingly deal with them, teach, take them hunting with them, so that soon the children themselves will know how to hunt fish.

It is interesting!
If dolphins hunt and feel danger, they lead their children from behind, but if there are no external threats, baby dolphins calmly swim ahead of their parents. Interestingly, after the young, the females swim, and then the males are the protectors.

Relationships with people

Since each dolphin with his fellow tribesmen and whales lives in peace and harmony, then he behaves accordingly. The sense of help in these animals is especially developed. They will never leave an ailing dolphin to die, they will save even a drowning man at sea, if, by a lucky chance, they find themselves nearby. Dolphins will hear a man's cry for help far away, since their hearing is very developed, as well as the brain section.

The fact is that dolphins spend all their time in the water, which is why their vision is impaired (weak water transparency). Then, as the hearing is excellently developed. The dolphin uses active location - the hearing is able to analyze the echo that occurs when it makes characteristic sounds from any objects surrounding the animal. Based on this, the echo tells the dolphin what shape, how long the objects around him are, what they are made of, in general, what they are. As you can see, hearing completely helps to fulfill a visual role for the dolphin, which does not prevent this peace-loving creature from feeling full in such a complex world.

It's easy for humans to tame a dolphin. Fortunately, like a dog, an animal is easy and simple to train. One has only to entice the dolphin with a delicious fish. He will do any flip for the public. Although dolphins have one flaw, they can forget any trick very quickly if a person forgets to feed him in time.

Why do we all treat dolphins differently than other animals. Looking at these cute and funny creatures, you forget about how huge these animals are, and how, despite their size, they are the only cetaceans that can be safely classified as the best "friends".

Dolphins, like grandmothers on a bench overly curious... They swim up to the person with interest, flirt with him, throw a ball, and even smile, although few people notice this. They are so arranged, to smile at us, to laugh with us. Well, we cannot call the face of a dolphin a muzzle, a smile on the face - cheerful and friendly - that's what attracts us to them!

Dolphins love us, we love them. But there are ... heartless people who, for the sake of profit, forget about humanity and kill these peaceful creatures. In Japan, dolphin hunting is like a drink! They don't even think to talk about sympathy for dolphins. On other continents, dolphins are housed in dolphinariums for the entertainment of the people. In cramped conditions, in which they do not live for more than five years (for comparison, in nature, dolphins live up to fifty years).

It is interesting!
The Indian state became the fourth in the world to ban the construction of dolphinariums. The first to ban these cetaceans in captivity were Asian Chile, Costa Rica, and also in Hungary. For Indians, dolphins are not the same as a person who also has the right to freedom and life in nature.

Dolphin therapy

The history of the great friendship between sea dolphins and humans goes back a long way, even before scientists began to call these animals dolphins. Researchers of cetacean body language have concluded that they have developed verbal communication skills just like humans. If a mentally ill child, autistic, spends a lot of time with dolphins and "communicate" with them, then this has a beneficial effect on him. The child begins to smile, laugh. The British spoke about this back in the 70s of the last century. Subsequently, dolphin therapy began to be actively used to treat not only mental and neurological diseases, but also many physical ones. Swimming with dolphins together is beneficial, it can relieve stress, severe headaches, neuralgias and even rheumatism.

Behavioral anomalies

All of you, probably on the news or on the Internet, observed such a picture when the beaches are full of unauthorized dolphins. Often they themselves are thrown away, because they are very sick, injured, or poisoned. Dolphins clearly hear sounds from the shore, which are very similar to the screams for calling for help from their fellows. Therefore, upon hearing such a cry, dolphins rush to the shore to help, and are often trapped.

Dolphins are incredibly smart and friendly to humans, they have cheerful disposition and they are just adorable animals. It's not for nothing that these aquatic mammals have earned such respect. Let's find out more about these amazing animals.

The word dolphin goes back to the Greek δελφίς (delphis), which in turn comes from the Indo-European root * gʷelbh - "womb", "womb", "womb". The name of the animal can be interpreted as "newborn baby" (perhaps because of the external resemblance to an infant or because the cry of a dolphin is similar to that of a child).

Dolphin is the only mammal whose birth begins in literally from the tail, not from the head! Young dolphins stay with their mother for 2 or 3 years.

There are almost forty species of dolphins in nature, their closest relatives are whales and sea ​​cows... Dolphins evolved relatively recently - about ten million years ago, during the Miocene. Most dolphin species live in salt water, but there are freshwater animals as well.

Adult dolphins reach sizes from 1.2 m in length and weight from 40 kg (river dolphin), up to 9.5 m and 10 tons (killer whale). The brain is the largest organ in a dolphin's body. During sleep, part of the brain is awake, allowing the dolphin to breathe in its sleep so as not to drown! The life of a dolphin is directly dependent on access to oxygen.

Dolphins have a weak sense of smell, but excellent eyesight and an absolutely unique ear. Emitting powerful sound impulses, they are capable of echolocation, which allows them to perfectly navigate in the water, find each other and food.

Dolphins are capable of producing a wide range of sounds through the nasal air sac located under the spihal. There are roughly three categories of sounds: frequency modulated whistles, explosive impulse sounds, and clicks. Clicks are the loudest among marine life sounds.

Dolphins can swim at speeds up to 25 miles per hour for extended periods. That's about 3 times faster than the fastest swimmers in the world.

With dolphins associated with the so-called. "Gray's paradox". In the 1930s. Englishman James Gray was surprised by the unusually high swimming speed of dolphins (37 km / h according to his measurements). Having made the necessary calculations, Gray showed that, according to the laws of hydrodynamics for bodies with unchanged surface properties, dolphins should have had several times greater muscle strength than was observed in them. Accordingly, he suggested that dolphins can control the streamlining of their bodies, maintaining laminar flow at speeds for which it should already become turbulent. In the USA and Great Britain, after World War II and 10 years later in the USSR, attempts began to prove or disprove this assumption. In the United States, they practically ceased in the period from 1965-1966 to 1983, as, on the basis of incorrect estimates, erroneous conclusions were made that the "Gray paradox" does not exist, and dolphins only need muscle energy to develop such a speed. In the USSR, attempts continued in 1971-1973. the first experimental confirmation of Gray's guess appeared.

Dolphins have a system sound signals... Signals of two types: echolocation (sonar), are used by animals to study the situation, detect obstacles, prey and "chirp" or "whistle", for communication with relatives, also expressing emotional condition dolphin.

Signals are emitted at very high, ultrasonic frequencies beyond the reach of human hearing. The sound perception of people is in the frequency range up to 20 kHz, dolphins use the frequency up to 200 kHz.

In the "speech" of dolphins, scientists have already counted 186 different "whistles". They have about the same number of levels of organization of sounds as a person: six, that is, sound, syllable, word, phrase, paragraph, context, they have their own dialects.

In 2006, a team of British researchers from the University of St Andrews conducted a series of experiments, the results of which suggest that dolphins are capable of assigning and recognizing names.

Communication with dolphins has a positive effect on the human body, especially on the child's psyche. British experts came to this conclusion back in 1978. Since that time, the development of "dolphin therapy" began. Now it is used to treat many physical and mental illness, including autism, and other ailments. Swimming with dolphins relieves chronic pain, boosts immunity, and even aids speech development in children.

Dolphins are also used in pet therapy to treat humans using ultrasonic sonar.

Dolphin and a pregnant woman off the coast of Ixtapa, Mexico. Ixtapa, MexicoPicture: CATERS

An absolutely unique feature of dolphins is that they can "look inside" a person, like an ultrasound device - for example, they quickly detect a woman's pregnancy. The feeling of "new life" often excites dolphins very emotionally, they react violently and joyfully to pregnant women, and, as a rule, pregnant women are not allowed to swim in open-air cages (although, perhaps, this is the best time for communication), so as not to take away the attention of animals from other visitors, and to avoid an involuntary "emotional attack" on the unborn baby.

An incredibly romantic fact from the dolphin's "personal" life - ethologists who study Amazon dolphins have found that males give gifts to potential mates. So, what gift is waiting for a female dolphin to consider as a candidate for continuation of the offspring? Of course, a bouquet of river algae!

India became the 4th country to ban captive dolphins. Earlier, Costa Rica, Hungary and Chile took similar measures. The Indians call dolphins "a person or person of a different origin than" homo sapiens ". Accordingly, a “person” must have his own rights, and its exploitation for commercial purposes is legally unacceptable. Scientists analyzing animal behavior (ethologists) say that it is very difficult to determine the line that separates human intelligence and emotions from the nature of dolphins.

The United States and Russian law enforcement agencies have trained ocean dolphins for military purposes. Combat dolphins were trained to detect underwater mines, rescue sailors after the destruction of their ship, and search and destroy submarines using kamikaze techniques.

The dolphin has twice as many convolutions in the cerebral cortex than humans.

Dolphins not only have a "vocabulary" of up to 14,000 sound signals, which allows them to communicate with each other, but also have self-awareness, "social consciousness" and emotional empathy - a willingness to help newborns and the sick by pushing them to the surface of the water.

Dolphins are voracious predators, feeding mainly on fish, molluscs, crustaceans; sometimes they attack their relatives.

Dolphins mainly live in public, are found in all seas and even climb into rivers.

Dolphins are famous for their playful behavior and the fact that for the sake of entertainment, they can blow air bubbles under the water in the form of a ring with the help of a blowhole. These can be large bubble clouds, bubble streams, or individual bubbles. Some of them act as a kind of communication signals.

Within a flock, dolphins form very close bonds. Scientists have noticed that dolphins take care of sick, wounded and elderly relatives, and a female dolphin can help another female in difficult childbirth. At this time, the dolphins that are nearby, protecting the female in labor, swim around her for protection.

Along with humans and bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees), dolphins are the only animal species that can mate for pleasure.

Another proof of the high intelligence of dolphins is the fact that adults sometimes teach their cubs to use special hunting tools. For example, they "wear" sea sponges on their muzzles in order to avoid injury when hunting fish, which can hide in the bottom sediments of sand and sharp pebbles.

Dolphins' skin is very delicate and easily damaged by contact with other surfaces. This is why all sharp objects, such as rings, must be removed before stroking the dolphin.

Dolphins have up to 100 teeth in their mouths, but they do not chew food with them, but only grab it. Dolphins swallow all prey whole.

Dolphins can dive to a depth of 305 meters, but, as a rule, they only swim so deeply when hunting. Many bottlenose dolphins live in almost shallow water. In Sarasota Bay, Florida, dolphins spend significant time at a depth of only 2 meters.

The oldest captive dolphin was named Nelly. She lived at Marineland Marine Mammal Park (Florida) and died when she was 61 years old.

When dolphins hunt, they use interesting tactics to trap fish. They begin to circle around the school of fish, close the ring, forcing the fish to stray into a tight ball. Then, in turn, dolphins grab the fish from the center of the school, preventing it from leaving.

Dolphins can rise up to 6 meters above the water when they jump out of the water.

In one of the New York museums, American scientists presented forty photographs taken from a computer screen. They reflected the gradual transformation of man into a dolphin. It is under hypothetical conditions if people would completely move to live in the Ocean. Moreover, the information about dolphins was not put into the computer.

The machine had no idea about their existence. The result of the calculations was stunning. The computer with all its processors issued not only appearance"Aristocrats of the sea", but also their physiological characteristics!

Seeing a dolphin in the sea is considered a very good sign. To communicate with them better is incredible happiness. These glorious creatures with clever eyes will say something in return.

And they know how to speak. Scientists found this out, putting forward the version that dolphins communicate in their own language. There is an assumption that many years ago we spoke the same way as these cute mammals. It's just that our speech then evolved, but their speech remained at the same level. Can we return to the former understanding?

People who spend a lot of time with dolphins say that they sing songs about famous events, fish, and everyone they met, rescued or accompanied. And their constant chirping is very pleasant to the ear.

Interestingly, in a similar way, marine intellectuals are able to communicate with different kinds sea ​​creatures. Moreover, dolphins can make quiet sounds. But only a small percentage of the world's population has the ability to hear them.

In the meantime, basic communication between a dolphin and a person takes place with the help of hand signals and sign language. Although, the trainers of these smiling creatures argue that sometimes even this is not required. Because mammals understand exactly what they hear.

Working with humans is generally fun for dolphins. And they always strive to help us in everything. They often provide an escort for ships by jumping and playing side by side. Another one interesting feature these creatures that they live for today and do not let sad memories ruin their lives. They keep their own stories, but they see no reason to let history collide with the present day. Oh, these sea inhabitants could tell a lot ...

Intelligence surprised scientists

Well, scientists have been trying for a long time to decipher the incomprehensible language of dolphins. And a linguist from Harvard University, George Zipf, developed his own way of doing this. He counted how many times in a typical text on English language there are different letters. Indeed, several identical signs cannot stand in a row in a meaningful text, they occur with some frequency.

The luminaries then plotted the frequencies of the letters in a specific order and on a logarithmic scale. The result is an oblique line with a slope of -1. For texts in other languages, the slope was the same. An absolutely random set of letters, which does not carry any information, is located horizontally on the chart, without any tilt.

That is, any gibberish that has passed through a sieve of mathematical formulas will show a zero result on such a graph. Thus, scientists studied dolphin whistling using the Zipf method and obtained the same slope factor as that of human languages. That is - carrying information!

“So, dolphins are close to us in intelligence,” the scientists concluded. Now the point is to understand what these "whistlers" want to tell us?

DIRECT SPEECH

Researcher of the Laboratory of Bioacoustics Vladislav TARCHEVSKAYA, for many years has been dealing with the problem of sound communication of dolphins:

- It is possible that humans and dolphins are the most intelligent creatures in the universe. Marine life are fraught with extraordinary opportunities. The frequency range of sound signals in dolphins significantly exceeds that of humans. Judge for yourself: if our audio communication takes place in a frequency band of up to 20 kHz (and musicians are able to distinguish up to 40 kHz), then in dolphins this "ceiling" is raised to 300 kHz. Moreover, as a result of our research, it turned out that our "brothers" have about the same number of levels of organization of sounds as humans: six. Sound, syllable, word, phrase, paragraph, context.

In humans, semantic meaning arises from the 3rd level, that is, from the word. But at what level it begins in a dolphin, we do not yet know. But in terms of complexity, the organization of sound signals in humans and dolphins is almost the same. In general, there are many noticeable parallels between the two species - Homo sapiens and Orcinus orca. Their lifespan is about the same as that of humans, they grow up at the same age, are very sociable and live in families. And they have their own dialects - something like our languages.

Everyone has their own name

There is a legend that dolphins are reincarnated people who previously inhabited Atlantis, which disappeared under the waters of the ocean. Sounds pretty. And also, there is a version that dolphins, like humans, have names that they name each other.

DIRECT SPEECH

Pavel Vedenin, psychologist:

- It is true that dolphins are the second intelligent creatures on earth. And if they lived on land, Darwin would determine that man originated from them. Dolphins read human thoughts at a great distance. Have you ever seen dolphins frolicking in the sea? They are not at all afraid of people and like to swim pretty close to the swimmers. Probably, they would have played with us close to the coast, but, obviously, it is too shallow for them. There are cases when dolphins showed rather high "intellectual" abilities.

And it's easy enough to get in touch with them. And this has been done for a long time. I do not mean simple training, although it is impressive. But I would like to emphasize that these animals are not only trained, but also capable of training, that is, of consciously performing the tasks assigned to them. The logical chains that dolphins build are much longer and tighter than any other animal can bind.

Aliens from outer space live in the sea

In one of the New York museums, American scientists presented forty photographs taken from a computer screen. They reflected the gradual transformation of man into a dolphin. It is under hypothetical conditions if people would completely move to live in the Ocean. Moreover, the information about dolphins was not put into the computer. The machine had no idea about their existence. The result of the calculations was stunning. The computer with all its processors gave out not only the appearance of the "aristocrats of the sea", but also their physiological characteristics!

There is also other indirect evidence that dolphins are closest relatives. modern man... For example, a Chinese biologist amazed scientific world, claiming that dolphins are descendants of aliens from outer space. Here's an amendment: Professor Hsu Sensung has no doubt that some dolphins have a higher IQ than humans. He also assures that he maintains telepathic contact with them.

The professor's wards transmit signals to him. He perceives them as thoughts and images. From which he learned: the ancestors of dolphins flew to Earth on interstellar ships 100 thousand years ago. They were forced to leave their own planet due to eerie environmental issues... However, on Earth, their technologies turned out to be unusable, and after centuries the civilization of stellar aliens fell into complete decline ...

Sometimes "gray ufonauts" paralyze a person at a distance ... Someone will grin, thinking that these are just modern myths, fairy tales of people with a heightened unbridled imagination. But let's not rush to "draw the line". What now opens modern science in the field of dolphinology, and does 100 times overlap the most incredible fantasies and legends about the life of toothed cetaceans.

One of the latest hypotheses was put forward by the Kennedy Space Center astronomer Simon Clark. In his opinion, dolphins are indigenous to one of Jupiter's moons. "Forget about the" little green men "- the most smart creatures after the person in our Solar system there may be dolphins, ”the scientist said.

The fact is that when NASA launched a few years ago space station"Galileo" flew from the moon of Jupiter Europa in only 400 kilometers, its sensitive radio detectors recorded some movement under the ice in the ocean.

Sound sensors picked up a whistle coming directly from under the ice. Then a directive from the highest echelons of government obliged NASA to classify all data on the Galileo program. Therefore, the details of the discovery became known only recently.

“After these facts were transmitted to Earth and subjected to thorough computer analysis,” Clarke said, “the scientists were amazed. The audiographer showed that the frequency of sounds emanating from the ocean of Europa was identical to the sounds made by terrestrial dolphins! The probability of error is 0.001 percent.

Although on this moment it is impossible to say what kind of creatures "talk" in the oceans of Europe, scientists put forward a hypothesis that organisms similar to our earthly dolphins live on the distant moon of Jupiter.

DIRECT SPEECH

Doctor of Medical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the State Oceanarium of Ukraine (Sevastopol) Lyudmila Lukina:

- For a long time, the science of marine mammals considered dolphins to be secondary aquatic. V glacial period in extreme cold weather, they went under water, adapted, turned into cute charming creatures. And there was a lot of evidence for that. And now there is a theory that this is a parallel human civilization.

There is debate about the origin of cute cetaceans, various hypotheses are being discussed, but the mystery of the dolphin's pedigree has not yet been solved. In any case, scientists are not yet able to say anything worthwhile about their origin. The boundless distance of time for us remains an intriguing and, alas, an unsolved mystery.

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