Dolphins may be closer to humans than previously realised, with new research showing they communicate by whistling out their own ‘names’. The evidence suggests dolphins share the human ability to recognise themselves and other members of the same species as individuals with separate identities. The research, on wild bottlenose dolphins, will lead to a reassessment of their intelligence and social complexity, raising moral questions over how they should be treated. The research was carried out by Vincent Janik of the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St Andrews University, who has found bottlenose dolphins to be among the animal world’s quickest learners of new sounds. He said: ‘Each animal develops an individually distinctive signature whistle in the first few months of its life, which appears to be used in individual recognition.’ The research has its origin in the 1960s when dolphin trainers first noticed that captive animals each had their own personal repertoire of whistles. This prompted speculation that dolphins had their own language and might even have individual ‘names’. However, the theory was controversial among whale and dolphin researchers, and until now, there had been no means of testing it. Janik’s work was based […]