Do you love hearing the cheerful sounds of dolphins while they frolic and dance in the ocean? While on your next dolphin tour in Madeira Beach, listen closely, because what you may not realize is that these fascinating sounds are a very effective way of communicating. Just like humans, each and every dolphin has a “voice”, one that other dolphins recognize as a distinctly individual sound. Even a baby dolphin, called a calf, can detect its mother’s whistle within the pod immediately after birth! Learn more about how dolphins communicate.
Using their blowholes, air sacks, and valves, dolphins can emit a vast array of sounds in frequency levels that range ten times beyond what humans can hear. Using a system called “echolocation” or “bio sonar”, dolphins communicate by emitting calls out to the environment and listening to the echoes of those calls that return from various objects near them. The echoes are then used to locate and identify the objects, a highly effective system also used for navigation and hunting.
Echolocation is the same system used by submarines to navigate while underwater. However, impressively enough, a dolphin’s sonar is far more advanced than this human technology.
Dolphins are able to pinpoint the exact information about their surroundings and the size, distance, and nature of an object. Their speech is so complex that the sounds cross the species barriers, enabling different types of dolphin to communicate. They’ve even been known to give and receive instructions!
Want to hear dolphin communicate? Book a tour on our popular Dolphin Quest sight-seeing tour in beautiful Madeira Beach or click here to listen now!
Resources: www.everythingdolphins.com, www.wikipedia.org
