Scientists who developed an underwater microphone to study dolphin’s communication skills has recorded two dolphins having a conversation prompting conclusion that the friendly marine mammals use words and sentences to communicate with each other.

Researchers at the Karadag Nature Reserve, in Feodosia, Russia, recorded two Black Sea bottlenose dolphins, called Yasha and Yana while swimming in a pool using the underwater microphone developed to distinguish the ‘voices’ of dolphins. 

It has long been known that the intelligent mammals use a series of clicks and whistles to talk to each other but scientists believe they actually alter the frequency and volume to form words and sentences much like we do. They even wait to reply and change their frequency to respond to what has been said showing they are listening to each other.

“Each pulse that is produced by dolphins is different from another by its appearance in the time domain and by the set of spectral components in the frequency domain. In this regard, we can assume that each pulse represents a phoneme or a word of the dolphin’s spoken language,” stated lead researcher Dr Vyacheslav Ryabov.

The new discovery has further shown the high intelligence dolphins possess and hints that they are able to develop a highly developed spoken language much like us humans.

“This language exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language,” said Ryabov. “This indicates a high level of intelligence and consciousness in dolphins, and their language can be ostensibly considered a highly developed spoken language, akin to the human language.”

Earlier research has found dolphins have also developed a kind of sign language through use of their flippers and communication between individual dolphins increases when undertaking challenging tasks.

The new research was published in the journal Mathematics and Physics.