Melbourne: It`s not only humans who
strive for efficiency when communicating, even dolphins rely
on brevity while speaking -- a phenomenon known as the "law of
brevity", a new study has revealed.
In their long-term quest to understand how complex
communication systems developed, an international team, led by
University of Aberdeen, chose to study dolphins as the animals
are far removed from humans on the evolutionary tree.
They diverged from humans some 65 million years ago,
and their brains are built differently from ours. At the same
time, dolphins are known to communicate with a repertoire of
about 30 non-vocal behaviours.
The scientists broke down each of these 30 behaviours
into individual units. A side flip, for example, requires a
dolphin to jump and land on its side for a total of two units.
Head butting takes four units, as two individuals jump, hit
and use their heads.
After hundreds of hours of observation and analyses,
they concluded that dolphins perform simple, one-move
behaviours more often than complicated, multi-faceted actions.
Lead scientist David Lusseau was quoted by the
`ABC Science` as saying: "The more you`re going to have to
say something, the shorter you want it to be so that you can
diminish the amount of time it takes you to communicate.
"The listener is trying to make the least effort
possible to understand what is said to him or her. The speaker
is trying to make the least effort possible to communicate."
Until now, scientists had never documented the law of
brevity in another species, but research behaviourist Dr
Brenda McCowan suspects that dolphins and humans aren`t the
only ones who use it.
Systems of communication, she says, might simply need
to be structured in certain ways in order to work. "This work
contributes to the growing body of data that humans are not as
unique as once thought and that we have profound similarities
in our behaviour and communication with other animals."
Bureau Report
