What’s that Flipper? Scientists listen in on incredulous whistling dolphins

The official name for the dolphin vocalisation was “non signature whistle B”. The “suggested function of this whistle type”, the researchers wrote in careful language, was “as a ‘query’.”

They also had an unofficial, perhaps slightly less careful, name for it. Laela Sayigh, from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said they had called it “the WTF whistle”. They used the unprintable internet acronym for incredulity because that was what seemed to be going on. It was a noise the dolphins seemed to make when something strange was afoot.

Sayigh’s work investigating this and other dolphin calls has led to her being shortlisted for the world’s newest scientific award: the Coller-Dolittle prize for interspecies communication. This is a $100,000 annual prize for research into understanding what animals

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