CANBERRA, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- High-frequency music could be the key to communicating with dolphins, Australian researchers have found.
In a study published recently, researchers from Australian National University (ANU) said that they had great success playing music to dolphins in New South Wales (NSW) in a bid to communicate with the highly-intelligent mammals.
The study involved performers singing or playing flutes, piccolos and Indian wooden recorders from the deck of a boat in December.
Researchers found that dolphins were attracted by the music and responded with their own calls, which were recorded by an underwater microphone.
Sally Walker, a flautist from the ANU School of Music, said a pod of bottlenose dolphins approached the boat within minutes of starting her performance.
"One dolphin glided directly underneath me at the same speed as the boat, and the rest of the pod danced around it," she said in a media release on Thursday.
"High frequencies and particular intervallic distances between notes seemed to draw the dolphins in and excite them, and staff of the Imagine boat said that we had seen an unusually large number of dolphins both in the port and out to sea."
Olivia De Bergerac, a dolphin expert and co-author of the study who has spent more than 25 years researching human interactions with dolphins, said little was known about how the mammals respond to live music.
"Dolphins live in a world of sounds. They communicate with one another by sending a sound which is a hologram of information reflected in their melon, a mass of adipose tissue found in their forehead, so I know we as humans can communicate with dolphins through music," she said.
"Dolphins are highly intelligent creatures and can sense our thoughts, feelings, state of being and send us sounds to heal us."
The research team will next play music for dolphins via an underwater microphone to determine which sounds they are most receptive to and how the reaction differs from music from above the water. ■