Humans have developed various dialects due to different living areas. For example, in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions of my country, there are Subei dialect , Ningbo dialect , Suzhou dialect , Wuxi dialect , Shaoxing dialect and so on. So, do animals have dialects?
As early as the 1970s, when the famous American cetacean experts Rogers Payne and his wife were investigating humpback whales, they discovered that the calls of humpback whales living in the Bermuda Sea in the Atlantic Ocean were similar to Humpback whales living in the Hawaiian waters of the Pacific Ocean have different calls. Could it be that humpback whales living in different areas have different "dialects"?
Japanese scientist Toshiro Kuroki specializes in dolphin language It is believed that dolphin language is very similar to human language. It not only has the universal " Mandarin ", but also has its own unique "dialect". He cited an example. The Kanto dolphins living in the Atlantic Ocean have 17 language types, while the Kanto dolphins living in the Pacific Ocean have 16 language types. Nine languages are common between them, accounting for about half, and the other half languages They are each unique and cannot be understood by each other. This is the dialect of dolphins.
Not long ago, two scientists, Janet Thomas of the Hubbs Marine World Research Institute in San Diego, and Lan Sterling of the Canadian Wildlife Service, discovered seals living in the waters of the Antarctic Peninsula. The calls of Weddell seals are different from those of Weddell seals living in the waters near McMurdo Sound.
Recently, Lance Workman, an ornithologist at the University of Grammogan in Wales, UK, used a sound spectrometer to record the calls of robins in Wales and Sussex areas and found that they Although they are the same bird, the melody and pitch of their chirping sounds are different. This shows that not only sea animals have dialects, but birds also have dialects. The problem is that we have not studied it in the past.
So, how do animals’ “dialects” form? Scientists tell us that animals of the same kind living in different areas have been listening to the sounds of animals in their local area since the day they were born. In the process, they constantly imitated the sounds they heard. Over time, the sounds of animals in this area developed certain characteristics, and thus the animal "dialects" gradually emerged. This is very similar to how human dialects are formed.
