Aliens and Dolphins

Dolphins have large, sophisticated brains, elaborately developed in the areas linked to higher-order thinking. They have a complex social structure, form alliances, share duties and display personalities. Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, studies animal communication in preparation for extraterrestrial contact and began the Order of the Dolphin which set out to determine what our ocean-going compatriots here on Earth might be able to teach us about talking to extraterrestrials.

Doyle uses information theory which is a branch of math that analyzes the structure and relationships of information to analyze radio signals, hoping to better detect intelligence in space. Using information theory it’s possible to separate binary code from random 0s and 1s. Information theory also shows that dolphins have rules of grammar and syntax. Doyle confirmed that dolphin signals weren’t random noise by turning to the work of Harvard linguist George Zipf who, in the 1930s, had found a striking pattern common to human languages.

Doyle also noted that there are some tantalizing studies suggesting dolphins share their own language. All are qualities humans hope to see in an alien, and contact is not complete without some attempt at communication which is why Doyle and his team are finding new methods of converse through dolphins.