Dolphins name one another, and they click and whistle about their lives or the dangers posed by sharks and humans.
Dolphins name one another, and they click and whistle about their lives or the dangers posed by sharks and humans. They also pass on useful bits of know-how from mother to child, such as how to catch fish or how to flee. If they had language in the same sense that we do, however, they would not only pass down little bits of information but also aggregate them into a broad body of knowledge about the world. Over the span of generations clever practices, complex knowledge and technology based on two, three or several components would develop. Dolphins would have history—and with history, they would learn about the journeys and ideas of other dolphin groups, and any one individual could inherit a fragment of language, say, a story or poem, from another individual who had lived hundreds of years before. That dolphin would be touched, through language, by the wisdom of another dolphin, who was in every other way long gone.