Dolphins, like chimpanzees, birds and many other animals, also use vocalizations for communication. They produce whistles, creaks, chuffs, screams, squawks, pops, chirps– a whole assortment of sounds that scientists have labelled in any number of ways.
Dolphins appear to use these communicative behaviours, vocalizations, physical contact, and postures, to express all sorts of things to each other. They can communicate their emotional state (anger, frustration, contentment, affection), but also convey information about their reproductive state, age, gender, etc. What’s more, dolphins, like many animals, can learn to read each other’s behaviours and communicative signals in order to coordinate activities like feeding on fish, or even just swimming together.
Despite being true that dolphins can be taught artificial communication systems they don’t seem to use their normal communication system to do any of the human language common things like combination of meanings, refer to things in the past and the future or refer to abstract concepts or even refer to objects in their environment.
Researchers say dolphins' aesthetic value, and the emotions raised by the interaction may have healing properties. Some have speculated that the ultrasound emitted by dolphins as part of their echolocation system may have a beneficial effect.
Animals, and especially mammals, can favourably change our social dynamic, which is typically one of withdrawal and increasing isolation among people with depression or in Nikki’s case a lack of interaction.
The United States Navy implemented a program in 1960 to work with dolphins and sea lions in order to help with defense, mine detection, and design of new submarines and new underwater weapons. The Navy did many tests with several marine mammals to determine which would be best for the jobs they needed done and eventually the bottlenose dolphin and California sea lion were shown to be the best at what the Navy needed them for. The bottlenose dolphin’s asset was their highly evolved biosonar helping to find underwater mines and the sea lions asset was their impeccable underwater vision which can help to detect enemy swimmers.
Some dolphins have found a place in history like Flipper the dolphin of the 1963 American feature film.
Originally Flipper was actually played by a female dolphin named Mitzi. Later A television series inspired by the movie ran from 1964-67 and was played by Suzy, and occasionally by other females named Patty, Kathy, Scotty and Squirt.
In 1984, a young bottle-nosed dolphin started to appear at the mouth of Dingle Harbour in Ireland. The now world-famous dolphin christened "Fungi" has remained in Dingle since, and has become both a friend to the locals and a great "touristic attraction" for visitors.