The Dolphin's large and highly encephalized brain has previously been the source of many speculations about its intellectual potential. Today we know that the dolphin is indeed a highly intelligent mammal, and we have a much richer appreciation for and understanding of its intellectual specialization and abilities. Researchers at The Dolphin Institute in Hawaii are trying to better demonstrate the dolphin's ability to understand language using visual and acoustic languages in which "gestures or sounds refer to objects, actions, relationships among objects, modifiers of place and location, and other things."

Learn more about dolphin behavior:

 

L. M., Richards, D. G. & Wolz, J. P. (1984). Comprehension of sentences by bottlenosed dolphins. Cognition, 16, 129-219.

L.M. & Uyeyama, R.K. (1999). The dolphin's grammatical competency; Comments on Kako (1999). Animal Learning & Behavior, 27, 18-23.

L.M., Kuczaj, S. A. II, & Holder, M. D. (1993). Responses to Anomalous Gestural Sequences by a Language-Trained Dolphin: Evidence for Processing of Semantic Relations and Syntactic Information. Journal of Experimental Psychology , General , 122, 184-194.

D. G., Wolz, J. P. & Herman, L. M. (1984). Vocal mimicry of computer generated sounds and vocal labeling of objects by a bottlenosed dolphin, Tursiops truncatus. Journal of Comparative Psychology , 98, 10-28.