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Becky
A Chatty Surrogacy
by Becky - April 17, 2007 - 3:45 PM

gSpeaking of things we do to raise smart babies…Consider the plight of Castaway, a pregnant bottlenose dolphin who’s due any minute. When dolphins are deaf, they’re not able to echolocate in order to defend them against predators, and that’s a rough sentence for a dolphin in captivity. Castaway was rescued last November and has since been staying at Key Largo’s Marine Mammal Conservancy. Her calf is about to be born any day, and tests confirm its hearing abilities are normal. To make sure the baby learns to echolocate, they’ve installed phone lines running from the conservancy over to a marine research facility down the road. You can watch for updates here.

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Comments (5)

  1. Ummmm…. bottleNOSE dolphin, perhaps? And echolocate, maybe? Or did I mis-read all of that?

    posted by Kelley O on 4-17-2007 at 4:34 pm

  2. yes, absolutely–thank you

    posted by Becky on 4-17-2007 at 5:03 pm

  3. As an audiologist who has studied linguistics, I’m a little concerned that the baby dolphin won’t be able to learn the language through the recordings, although it’s better than nothing. We used to tell deaf parents of hearing children to just let their kids listen to the radio or tv a lot, but this failed miserably because these forms of language aren’t interactive. It would be like you or me trying to learn a new language simply by turning on the TV in Bolivia. But it’s still a good idea, and this could teach us a lot about how we develop language, as well.

    posted by J-Bot on 4-18-2007 at 7:06 am

  4. Is there a reason they can’t just put more dolphins together?

    posted by Miss Cellania on 4-18-2007 at 9:07 am

  5. “they’re not able to echolocate in order to defend them against predators, and that’s a rough sentence for a dolphin in captivity.”

    Wouldn’t it be a rough sentence for a dolphin in the wild? Captivity is a pretty cushy gig for a dolphin I’d think.

    Also, wouldn’t it be more productive to put the dolphin & calf in the wild with other dolphins? There the baby would learn from other dolphins, and Castaway would have the protection of the others, and their help in locating food. Seems the Conservancy is just getting in the way trying to help out.

    posted by Dave on 4-18-2007 at 11:06 am

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