The idea that dolphins communicate with a complex form of language has been entrenched in our culture since the days of the TV show “Flipper".
Join us for a conversation with Dr. Laela Sayigh, a research specialist at WHOI, as she unveils how this idea originated by giving a brief history of the study of dolphin communication. She will discuss our current state of knowledge of dolphin communication, including examples of recent research, focusing particularly on structure and function of individually distinctive signature whistles and less well-understood non-signature whistles. Learn about current avenues of research, including playback experiments, tag studies, and a project using acoustic monitoring to develop an alert system for dolphin mass stranding events.
Laela received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (MIT/WHOI) Joint Program, and her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
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Her research focuses on social behavior and communication of cetaceans (whales and dolphins). She has been involved with a long-term study of bottlenose dolphins in waters near Sarasota, Florida, for many years, where her work has focused on individually distinctive signature whistles and other aspects of dolphin communication.
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