Calling the kids

There is a voice that people use when ordering a sandwich, and a voice we use to tell people to watch their step as they approach a hole in the carpet, and the sweet voice we use to talk to a little baby.

Now it comes out that mother dolphins speak a high-pitched baby talk!

Researchers who had the time to look into this situation studied the tones used by 19 bottlenose dolphins who were addressing their calves.  And then they studied the same dolphin mamas and the tone they used to "speak" to other adults, or when they were talking to themselves, as many young parents find themselves doing.

The researchers found that in every case, the mother's whistle was higher when calling to their own calves.

Dolphins use a certain whistle that is unique to each one as a way to keep track of each other as they bob around in the drink.  

"They’re periodically saying, ‘I’m here, I’m here’,” said study co-author Laela Sayigh, a marine biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution up in Massachusetts.

And they had to talk the mother dolphins into wearing special microphones over more than three decades in Sarasota Bay, Florida, to get the data. 

In  other dolphin-related news from Florida...the Miami Dolphins  changed their helmet logo years ago. Before that, the flipper wore a helmet on the helmet. This leaves only the Raiders as a team whose helmet has a picture of a helmet.