(Livescience.com) Dolphins “talk” to each other, using the same process to make their high-pitched sounds as humans, according to a new analysis of results from a 1970s experiment.
The findings mean dolphins don’t actually whistle as has been long thought, but instead rely on vibrations of tissues in their nasal cavities that are analogous to our vocal cords.

Scientists are only now figuring this out, “because it certainly sounds like a whistle,” said study researcher Peter Madsen of the Institute of Bioscience at Aarhus University in Denmark, adding that the term was coined in a paper published in 1949 in the journal Science. “And it has stuck since.”

The finding clears up a question that has long puzzled scientists: How can dolphins make their signature identifying whistles at the water’s surface and during deep dives where compression causes sound waves to travel faster and would thus change the frequency of those calls.

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Institute for Marine Mammal Studies Director Moby Solangi says Saturday they saw groups of dolphins by the west side of Horn Island, by Ship Island, on the north and south sides of Cat Island and several were in the ship channel.

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SARASOTA, Fla. — Marine researchers untangled a young dolphin from a web of plastic, and now the animal is swimming freely in Sarasota Bay.

A team of scientists from Mote Marine Laboratory’s Dolphin Research Program captured the calf on Monday. The plastic was wound around the baby’s body between her blow hole and pectoral fin

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Just what do we think makes us so smart??

Well, lots of things. We have big, convoluted brains with many specialized nerve cell types; we have language and can understand symbols; we spend many years growing up within large, extended family and social networks; and, perhaps most importantly, we have a sense of self, and a sense of the ‘selves’ of others, including their emotions.

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September is usually one of our slower months for strandings and as I got out of bed on September 1st and headed out the door for a run, I thought how excited I was to be nearly done with the craziness of summer. Unfortunately, before I could get one foot out the door, the hotline rang at 6:45am. A gentleman living in Wellfleet had just seen two dolphins strand right behind his house on Chequesset Neck Rd.

Full blog post plus a video here

An elusive dolphin has been sighted off Cornwall three years after being seen much further north in the Irish Sea.
The rarely seen Risso’s dolphin was photographed off Mounts Bay in Cornwall in June of this year.
Scientists have now identified it as the same dolphin once seen 172 nautical miles away off Bardsey Island in Wales.
The new sighting will help conservationists better understand the offshore habits of this enigmatic and strange-looking creature.
Risso’s dolphins (Grampus griseus) are found throughout the world in temperate and tropical waters. They measure up to 4m in length and have a distinctive blunt round head.

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Dolphins: if only we could speak their language!

IT was hoped the squeals of a young baby would yesterday help reunite him with his mum.

The dolphin calf, estimated to be less than two weeks old, was being held in the water with a seven-year-old female, while his mum swam at the western end of Prospect Lake, East Ballina.

The three dolphins had been trapped in the lake since last Sunday, and there were serious concerns for their well being as the lake recorded a salinity level of five parts per thousand, 10ppt less than the minimum they can tolerate.

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A young Atlantic spotted dolphin that spent nearly three months recuperating at a Florida Keys marine mammal rehabilitation center was released off Key West Tuesday.

Rescuers with the Marine Mammal Conservancy released the animal about 10 miles to the southwest of the island after searching for more than two days to locate a pod of Atlantic spotted dolphins for him to join.

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