Scientists believe humans will soon be able to talk to dolphins thanks to artificial intelligence.
A new model created by Google could reveal the secrets behind how the animals communicate for the first time, with hopes we may be able to 'speak dolphin' in the future.
Google DeepMind's DolphinGemma has been programmed with the world's largest collection of dolphin sounds, including clicks, whistles and vocalisations that have been recorded over several years by the Wild Dolphin Project.
Dr Denize Herzing, founder and research director of the Wild Dolphin Project told The Telegraph: 'We do not know if animals have words.
'Dolphins can recognise themselves in the mirror, they use tools, they're smart but language is still the last barrier so feeding dolphin sounds into an AI model will give us a really good look if there are patterns, subtleties that humans can't pick out.
'The goal would someday be to "speak dolphin".'
The model will search through sounds that have been linked to behaviour to try to find sequences that could indicate a language.
Dr Thas Starner, a Google Deep-Mind scientist, said: 'The model can help researchers uncover hidden structures and potential meaningswithin the dolphins' natural communication, a task previously requiring immense human effort.
'We're just beginning to understand the patterns within the sounds.'
Humans could be able to understand dolphins thanks to Artificial Intelligence, scientists believe
Scientists say the goal would be to be able to 'speak dolphin' at some point in the future
Scientists hope the AI will be able to pick up patterns in noises made by the animals which could indicate words
It was revealed in 2022 that dolphins have regional accents.
Bottlenose dolphins have signature whistles that they use to identify each other. These noises are unique to each animal.
However, the new study found that the acoustic features of each dolphin's whistles are influenced by its local habitat and community.
It was already known that different groups of dolphins tend to develop different styles of signature whistles that they use like a name, but the factors that influenced them were a mystery.
Gabriella La Manna and her team at the University of Sassari in Italy studied the whistling habits of common bottlenose dolphins in six populations in the Mediterranean Sea.
In total, they analysed 188 hours of recorded dolphin chatter, mapping variations in acoustic features such as duration and changes in pitch, and ended up identifying 168 signature whistles.
They concluded that the local ocean environment and population size had the largest effect on the tones.
Signature whistles in areas with sea grass, such as Lampedusa and Port Cros, were higher pitched and shorter in length compared to when the sea bottom was muddy.
Dolphinsuse taste and signature whistles to identify each other, which are being recorded by scientists
It is known that dolphins tend to develop different styles of signature whistles that they use like a name
Additionally, amongst small populations, like in the Gulf of Corinth, the identifying calls had more changes in pitch than among larger populations.
Last year, a scientist dubbed the 'real life Doctor Dolittle' identified some of the meanings in the sounds made by dolphins
Dr Arik Kershenbaum, an expert in animal communications from the University of Cambridge, said dolphins' communication is some of the most difficult to study.
He explained: 'With dolphins, it is really hard because we don't even know the framework of what their language would be if they had one.'
In the recording, he identified a repeated pattern of the same whistle.
This, he hypotheses could be a 'signature whistle' equivalent to the dolphin's name.
From this, we might guess that this is a recording of one dolphin greeting another.
These whistles are so distinct that dolphins even develop regional accents influenced by the habitat and the community.
Scientists have discovered that Bottlenose Dolphins have regional accents much like humans
Dolphins are known to be able to recognise themselves in a mirror and be able to use tools
However, there are still mysteries in the recording.
For example, he notes that one whistle in the sequence was different from all the others.
He concludes: 'I don't know whether a dolphin would think this sounds the same just by looking at them.
'They do seem different but we just don't know whether these whistles would have the same cognitive effect.'
