Dolphin moms use ‘baby talk’ with their calves, rare among non-human species
A study three decades in the making reveals common bottlenose dolphins, which have complex communication, share a crucial trait with people.
The sight of chubby baby cheeks is often enough to transform even the most committed curmudgeon into a babbling softie.
Sentences become shorter, sounds are exaggerated, and the overall pattern of speech is more singsong and musical. Researchers have dubbed this “motherese,” or, more formally, “infant-directed speech.”
“We’re not changing the words that we’re saying, we’re changing the way that we’re saying them,” says Laela Sayigh, a marine biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Hampshire College in Massachusetts.
Only a handful of other species have been shown to change their calls when addressing young, including zebra finches, rhesus macaques, and squirrel monkeys. Now, Sayigh’s new study, based on three decades of data in
