ReasonableMatic
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They discovered the dolphins consistently produced whistles with higher maximum frequencies and greater frequency ranges in the presence of their offspring, compared with the whistles they made when they were alone or with other individuals.
The researchers, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said this shift in communication may help get the attention of their young and promote bonding and vocal learning.
Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, they said: '"Motherese" is a speech pattern that is nearly universal across cultures and languages in human caregivers interacting with children.
'But evidence among non-human species is sparse. Here, we report evidence for motherese in the bottlenose dolphin, a species that shows parallels to humans in their long-term mother-offspring bonds and lifelong vocal learning.
'The median age of calves in our sample was two years, which is well within the range of ages for child-directed communication occurs in humans.'
According to the authors, the findings also suggest that bottlenose dolphins are a promising animal to help study the evolution of vocal learning and language in humans.
Separate research from the University of Florida suggests that baby talk can help babies produce their own speech.
By mimicking the sound of a smaller vocal tract, scientists believe adults are cluing babies in to how the words should sound coming out of their own mouths.
Dolphins use high-pitched voices for their babies too, study finds
The dolphin signature whistle is a unique and important signal — akin to calling out their own name.
“They use these whistles to keep track of each other. They’re periodically saying, ‘I’m here, I’m here’,” said study co-author Laela Sayigh, a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution marine biologist in Massachusetts.
When directing the signal to their calves, the mother’s whistle pitch is higher and her pitch range is greater than usual, according to the study published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“That was true for every one of the moms in the study, all 19 of them,” said biologist Peter Tyack, a study co-author from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
Dolphin moms use baby talk to call to their young, recordings show
Dolphin mommas really baby talking Young Dolphs out there
The Dolphin family really fascinating as hell
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