In ancient Greece, dolphins were venerated
and believed to be our marine brethren.
Killing a dolphin was punishable by death.
It was said that dolphins were humans
who chose to return to the sea.
Poseidon, the god of the sea,
entrusted them with the mission of helping humans in peril.
Legend became reality for endurance swimmer Adam Walker
when a group of dolphins saved him
from being attacked by a great white shark in New Zealand.
With the help of dolphin specialist Fabienne Delfour,
he's out to answer a question that's intrigued us
since the beginning of time.
Why would dolphins come to our aid like this?
Could they be our aquatic double of sorts?
For this to be the case, dolphins would need to possess
abstract and concrete reasoning, self awareness,
the ability to invent tools, the construction of a culture,
and finally, a genuine language,
the faculties that make humans unique on the planet.
It seems impossible.
In the previous episode,
we discovered that dolphins look upon humans as allies.
We saw how they're able to problem solve
and grasp mathematical concepts.
Dolphins showed us they can
recognize themselves in a mirror,
an indication that they have
awareness of themselves and of others.
Finally, orcas, the largest of the dolphin family,
demonstrated their amazing concrete intelligence
by inventing hunting techniques based on observation,
a range of faculties that brings them closer to us,
but are they capable of more?
Could they truly be our aquatic counterparts?
Our quest for answers continues, taking us to new corners
of the planet where we'll meet more top experts.
We'll see how dolphins use humans to their own advantage,
that they have individual names, and that like us,
they live in groups with distinct cultures.
The big questions remains.
Will we one day be able to have a conversation with them?
(suspenseful music)
In the wilds of Western Australia, hundreds of kilometers
from the nearest town, Shark Bay is home to a long-term
study on a special population of bottlenose dolphins.
The most astonishing of them is a group
of some 20 individuals, surprisingly friendly and curious,
that come right up to Monkey Mia beach.
Here, for about the past 50 years,
it's the dolphins that observe the humans.
It all began a long time ago when local aboriginal people
would return from fishing
and toss some of their catch to the dolphins.
The habit stuck and was passed down to their progeny.
The dolphins now draw crowds, and strict rules have been
established to keep from turning them into a circus act.
One American biologist has been studying them
for over 30 years.
She's made a series of fascinating discoveries about
dolphin culture which she's happy to share with visitors.
Okay.
Good morning, everyone.
Everyone can hear me okay?
Okay, my name is Janet Mann.
I'm a professor of biology at Georgetown University.
And as you've already learned, this is Surprise.
She actually was named by the researchers
because she used to always surprise us
at the bow of the boat.
She was a crazy bow rider when she was young,
and we estimate that she's 38.
We think she's about Puck's age, maybe a year older.
Janet's research all started
with the members of this group.
They're the only dolphins out of the 2,500 in Shark Bay
that regularly approach and interact with humans.
They fearlessly hunt right under the noses
of curious onlookers.
Oher dolphins sometimes watch from deeper waters,
but they themselves never swim near the beach.
The thing that's special about the Monkey Mia dolphins
and the dolphins that come into the beach is they kind of
acted as ambassadors to the offshore population.
And because they weren't afraid of people
and had a lot of contact with them, when they join
with groups of others, those dolphins become comfortable.
And so we've been able to habituate really hundreds
if not thousands of dolphins to our research vessels.
And that gives us access to the entire population,
not just the ones at the beach.
The ones at the beach,
as Janet says, are more than simply curious.
The shore is first and foremost
one of their preferred hunting grounds.
Janet has discovered that the several thousand
bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay are divided into groups,
which in turn are divided into families.
Each family has its own special characteristics.
Each year, Janet brings a small team of students
to Shark Bay for two months.
She's clocked thousands of hours
observing these bottlenose dolphins.
No doubt reassured by the beach dolphins,
the rest of the Shark Bay dolphins
now let the researchers come near.
Janet can currently recognize nearly
1,500 of the 2,500 living here.
She even knows their family trees
and can sometimes work out
the dramatic incidents they've undergone.
Piglet is with her calf.
It's going to be hard for her
to take care of him with a wound like that.
She was born in November 1989.
And in April 1990, she got tangled in fishing line.
And she panicked and was weeping all over the bay.
And we found her the next day,
and she had somehow worked it off.
And now, she's got a big shark bite wound.
Otherwise, she's been doing okay.
Today, Janet can identify
the dozens of clans that make up the tribe
like the beach dolphins, solitary dolphins,
and those that hunt in the waves.
But most remarkably, she's discovered
a hundred or so dolphins exhibiting a behavior
that's extremely rare in the animal kingdom.
They've developed an incredibly resourceful skill,
using a tool.
One of the unique things about Shark Bay
is that we have the best documented tool users
among dolphins anywhere else in the world.
And this includes a behavior we call sponging where they use
basket sponges, and the sponges are actually an animal.
And about 5% of the population, mostly female,
tears off these basket sponges from the sea floor,
puts them on their rostrum or their beak
and uses them to forage in these deep channels
that are anywhere from eight to 12 meters deep.
And they scare up small prey,
we think primarily barred sand perch.
And then they drop the sponge, catch the fish,
and then go back and get their sponge and do it again.
Janet's interns are very lucky
to witness such a rare site.
The spongers, as they're called, have understood
that sponges offer the best protection
for their sensitive beaks while hunting for fish
among the abrasive sediments on the ocean floor.
It's the only tool use ever observed
among sea mammals with the exception of otters.
So we think it's predominantly a female behavior
because females have to hunt more than the males
in the sense that they raise offspring,
and it's energetically very expensive to raise an offspring.
They have to increase their food intake
by at least 50% to nurse a calf.
And so the females become very good at hunting,
and they specialize in different hunting techniques.
And so they focus on the food,
and the males focus on the females.
Even more astonishing,
the technique is passed on from mother to daughter,
which means this group has exclusive access
to this type of prey with no risk of competition.
Until now, the behavior was only documented
by a handful of rare photos.
Tool use is the fourth faculty dolphins share with humans.
But is this enough for us to affirm
that dolphin and human intelligence are comparable?
So people often ask whether the tool use
is a form of intelligence.
And I guess my quick answer is that there are a lot
of not so smart animals that use tools, so it's the way
they use the tools, how they learn the tool use,
how long it takes them to develop the method.
Those are the things that take brain power.
We think the smart thing about this is that the fish
that they're after don't have a swim bladder.
So the echolocation or the sonar doesn't reflect off
the swim bladder of the fish.
So these fish are inaudible and invisible
because they're really well camouflaged,
and the substrate is really gritty.
So the dolphins have actually figured out a way
to get at a prey item that nobody else can find
or that the other dolphins can't find.
You really need a sponge both to protect your beak and also
to access, to see these fish so you can go and catch them.
The beach dolphins and the spongers
are evidence that a large group of dolphins
can be subdivided into different communities that develop
their own skillset and culture, a culture which shapes
the identity of that particular group,
another characteristic no longer exclusive to humans.
But what happens when many communities
decide to come together?
It's hard to picture.
All together, it's estimated the world's dolphin population
numbers in the millions.
Spectacular gatherings of several thousands of them
happen once a year in four or five
different spots around the earth.
The easiest one to observe is off the coast of South Africa.
Scientists from around the world
flock the shores KwaZulu-Natal
to witness the extraordinary assembly of dolphins.
Naturalist Gail Addison works in the region of the Cape.
She helps South African researchers evaluate,
species by species, the staggering number of dolphins
making up these super groups.
Today, she's with Dr. Vic Peddemors
from the University of Durban.
It's amazing, Gail.
These common dolphins are pretty spread out.
It's quite interesting
how they're sweeping in a line like this.
You can see they're actually searching
for the sardines in that sort of a line.
It's quite a clever way because obviously,
it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.
And if they see them then, then they send that signal,
then they'll all charge together?
That's the amazing thing.
Hopefully, we'll see one.
There seems to be some sort of signal,
and they turn instantaneously.
Spectacular.
It's amazing.
The group of dolphins
just keeps growing in number.
It's estimated that for every dolphin
visible on the surface, there are 10 more underwater.
Gail can't wait to see for herself.
Below, it's like a highway at rush hour.
5,000, 6,000 dolphins, a super group.
Like the first humans on earth,
dolphins share the vast territory of the oceans.
They divided into several populations.
They're numerous communities that may have shared
a common language, a social organization,
another similarity with humans.
Evidence of the human-dolphin connection
is drawing stronger.
Sometimes dolphins even seem to be more clever than we are.
In Laguna, Brazil, dolphins have been using humans
for over two centuries.
10 generations of dolphins have taught fishermen
a hunting technique that benefits everyone.
[Carolina Translator] Hi, Elias, how are you?
I'd like to take some pictures of dolphins in the lagoon.
Can you take me?
[Elias Translator] Sure.
Biologist Carolina Bezamat de Abreu
is doing her doctoral thesis on this exceptional
collaboration between humans and dolphins.
The astonishing alliance began back in the 19th century.
Most likely by observing fishermen, the dolphins noticed
that some mullet were easier to catch than others,
those knocked unconscious by the lead in the casting nets,
those injured trying to escape,
or those that leapt from the water in fear.
All the dolphins needed to do was to find a way
to herd more fish near the fishermen, and they did.
Our research group has been working with this population
of bottlenose dolphins since 1980s.
So it's a small population, around 50 individuals.
And some of them call prey toward the fishermen.
Basically through photo identification,
we can identify them, each individuals by natural marks
on their dorsal fin so we know which one cooperates
with the fishermen and the ones that don't.
The first dolphins to pioneer this teamwork began herding
entire schools of mullet toward the fishermen.
The technique was honed generation after generation.
Just the other day, I saw this dolphin
called Pombigna in the water with her baby.
And she goes, and first the little baby is having a look.
Then he tries to do whatever she does,
and it's really amazing.
We do believe that the mother teachers their young,
and so it's a vertical transmission.
Safico, in charge of a Laguna fishing site,
also learned the technique from watching his father.
[Carolina Translator] Hi, Safico.
How are you?
[Safico Translator] Good, and you?
[Carolina Translator] How long have you been fishing
with the dolphins?
[Safico Translator] Since I was 16.
[Carolina Translator] Have you always
fished here on Laguna Bay?
[Safico Translator] Always.
[Carolina Translator] You learned from your father?
[Safico Translator] When I was little,
I'd bring my father his lunch.
I would stay to watch and ask questions.
I helped my family and learned at the same time.
I learned to recognize the dolphins
that worked with the fishermen.
They weren't the ones that we see now.
They were probably their fathers or grandfathers.
I finally got so I can recognize
all the dolphins working along the coast.
When we see the dolphins swim near the shore,
we know there'll be fish for everyone.
It's hard to fish without them.
[Carolina Translator] So they help you catch more fish?
[Safico Translator] Absolutely, we catch a lot more
with their help.
The dolphins have taught the fishermen
where to stand in order to catch the most fish.
Everyday, mullet from the sea swim into the estuary
to feed on sea grass growing in the lagoon, but the combined
forces of dolphins and fishermen creates a deadly trap.
[Safico Translator] The mullet arrive by the estuary.
They swim along the rocks of the breakwater over there
to head up the river.
Over where all the fishermen are lined up
is a heap of rocks we call the (speaks in foreign language).
And across from it, there's a sand bar
just a little beyond the fisherman over there.
When the schools of fish arrive to swim up the river,
the dolphins go over to block the end of the passage.
The mullet are stopped and more keep coming.
After a while, there's 100 or 200 trapped there.
At that point, the dolphins swim aside
to let the mullet through while other dolphins
spin pirouettes to frighten them.
The fish swim into the narrow gully
and straight toward the fishermen.
The dolphins swim behind the mullet to keep them
from turning back, and let the fishermen know
they're coming with telltale looks and signs.
There's the signal.
Now all the dolphins have to do is wait for the fishermen
to do their job so they can collect their share of the haul.
The process continues for two hours as the tide comes in.
Three's enough fish for everyone.
(Safico speaks in foreign language)
[Safico Translator] Each dolphin has its own way
of telling us that the fish are coming.
Some make big gestures when they come up for air,
like they wanna tell us something,
like someone who can't speak but motions with their hands.
It's the same with the dolphins.
They motion to us to say they're sending the fish.
[Carolina Translator] All the dolphins have names
the fishermen use, right?
[Safico Translator] We give them a name right after
they're born, as soon as they come near the shore to fish.
It might have something to do with a joke
or the name of a fisherman we like to tease.
We go with whatever we feel like at the time.
[Carolina Translator] Do all the fishermen know the names?
[Safico Translator] Oh, yes.
We pass them on to all the fishermen along the lagoon.
[Carolina Translator] Does the name have something to do
with the dolphin's behavior or just your jokes?
[Safico Translator] Mostly our jokes.
Scooby was born when the cartoon came out on TV.
We thought he looked like Scooby Doo.
Oh, Scooby!
Figueiredo was born around when Brazil's president,
Figueiredo, was elected.
Someone shouted, "Hey, there's Figueiredo,"
and that became his name.
Carabe, I can't remember how we came up with that one.
But usually, the name comes from the jokes
that are going around.
Electronica was always jumping out of the water.
He reminded us of an electronic game
that was popular at the time.
A miraculous catch for the fishermen
and easy hunt for the dolphins.
Everyone wins.
A story of real friendship and cooperation
links the fishermen and dolphins of Laguna.
But lately, humans haven't been holding up
their end of the bargain.
City sewage dumped into the water
is beginning to make the dolphins sick.
Together with Reynaldo, a former fisherman
turned photographer, Carolina studies hundreds
of disturbing photos of Laguna's dolphins.
[Carolina Translator] We can really see it here.
[Reynaldo Translator] It's really visible.
[Carolina Translator] Looks like eczema.
We're seeing more and more of it on Laguna's dolphins.
I think that's number 21.
This eczema is caused by water pollution.
Their immune system has been compromised,
and they're more susceptible to this kind of disease.
A lot of the dolphins in the group
suffer from the same skin condition, and it spreads quickly.
We're really worried.
[Reynaldo Translator] It's spreading over the whole body.
[Carolina Translator] The disease is advancing
much too quickly.
That's for sure.
See that one?
He had no signs just a few weeks ago.
Backed by the fishermen's association,
Carolina alerted health officials
so that sewage treatment tanks would be set up.
It's the least that could be done to ensure
the amazing cooperation between the Laguna fishermen
and dolphins continues for generations to come.
(relaxed music)
To sum up, dolphins are intelligent, capable of abstract
thinking, have self awareness and awareness of others,
show empathy, use tools, and in Laguna, even teach us
techniques to improve our fishing.
The gap separating dolphins from us
is growing smaller and smaller.
It seems all they're missing is speech.
On the (mumbles), Adam is back
to learn more with Fabienne Delfour.
He wonders, do all dolphins on the planet
understand each other,
or are there differences in the way they communicate?
So what's the average number of a pod?
[Fabienne Translator] For bottlenose dolphins,
the biggest group includes maybe a few hundred individuals.
For other members of the dolphin family,
it could be thousands.
And what defines a group.
[Fabienne Translator] The super group is made up
of many smaller groups.
They're spread out over a surface
of hundreds of square kilometers.
The common denominator uniting the group
is the possibility of sharing the same language.
So what you're saying is different dialects,
so England, Birmingham.
[Fabienne Translator] Exactly, different dialects,
like Breton, Occitan, that's specifically
what structures the group.
The only thing missing is they can't communicate
through voice like a human being.
[Fabienne Translator] What do you mean
by they can't communicate like humans?
Well, they can't ask for fish or say,
"Do you wanna come down the road with me?"
They can't talk like another human being.
[Fabienne Translator] You can't begin to imagine
how complex their system of communication is,
much more than our own and just as accurate.
(dolphin calls)
In fact, dolphins communicate
in several ways, with clicks, whistles, and squeaks,
as well as complex gestures.
At the Dolphin Research Center in Florida,
Dr. Stan Kuczaj explains how their language is constructed.
First of all, to converse in a group,
it's important to know who's speaking to whom.
But to do so, each dolphin needs a name,
an acoustic identity card.
A number of years ago, Holli told me that they had mothers
who could retrieve their calves and that the trainers,
they would ask the mothers to do that.
So the mothers could do anything they wanted.
They could go get the calf physically.
They could use a call to retrieve the calves.
Whatever they chose, it didn't matter.
And what we discovered, which was sorta exciting to us,
was that the mothers almost always used a call.
Each mother used a signature whistle to retrieve her calf.
To prove this, they put the mother
on one side of the tank and her calf on the other
along with another dolphin.
Then they asked the mother to summon her calf.
She doesn't move.
She just calls.
Across the tank, only the calf reacts
and swims over to join her.
The other dolphin stays put.
The moms clearly summon the calf and not the other dolphin.
The closest analogy that I could relate this to
is the animals calling one another
just like humans call one another.
Hey, Steve, come on over here.
Or hey, you, come over here.
Holli Eskelinen and her colleagues
discovered that dolphin mothers
use different calls to retrieve different offspring.
It's called a signature whistle.
(dolphin whistles)
To ask her calf to join her, the mother emits
a modified version of her own signature whistle,
a whistle she uses specifically with this calf.
If we could start to associate actual behaviors
with whistles, vocalizations, or sounds, then we can
start to see this is communication, or this is language.
This research is important for us
to start to crack the communication code.
We've come so far in marine mammal science,
and this is the tip of the iceberg.
(dolphin calls)
If dolphins can use their name,
their signature whistle to identify themselves
to other dolphins, could they take language even further?
And to what ends?
Back to South Africa, where thousands of dolphins
have gathered off the coast of KwaZulu-Natal.
(suspenseful music)
The sardine run is about to begin.
The Cape gannets on Bird Island
are aflutter with excitement.
140,000 of them will follow the migrating sardines
all the way north of Durban.
It's a vital feast for them.
The Cape gannets are the first to spot the sardines
from the sky, but the dolphins are always the first
to reach them, followed close behind by sharks.
The majority of the dolphins are arriving,
alerted by the hammering sound of birds
diving into the water several kilometers away.
(suspenseful music)
A mass of four billion sardines,
thousands of tons of food for the taking.
Let the mega feast begin.
(suspenseful music)
Predators of all kinds flock
to this all you can eat buffet, diving birds, sea lions,
groups of bottlenose, and common dolphins.
Before long, the sharks join in the feast.
The brain power of the dolphins drives the hunt.
The dolphins are experts at communicating and teamwork.
Their echolocation clicks, signature whistles,
and vocalizations vary from group to group and help them
identify and find each other amid the deafening noise.
(suspenseful music) (dolphin calls)
But in the underwater cacophony,
it's not enough to simply know each other's position.
They also need to coordinate, organize a battle plan,
and give specific orders, right, left, herd them toward me.
Unlike the other predators at the banquet,
dolphins only hunt in groups.
But do they really have a language that complex?
For a few moments, the battlefield
gives the illusion of calm.
Most of the sardines are gone.
But in a few hours, it'll all start back up again.
(upbeat music)
Can dolphins really communicate the kind of directions
indispensable to coordinating a hunt on the scale
of sardine run with a language containing concepts
as abstract as right or left?
There's only one way to find out.
Give them a complex problem that can only be solved
using a sophisticated form of communication.
The researchers put a fish in a tube
that's closed at both ends.
It can only be opened
by pulling on the two ropes simultaneously.
The first test subject is a dolphin
that's never done it before.
At first, the dolphin is frustrated.
It knows there's a fish inside, but it can't get to it.
Another dolphin comes over to help.
They try everything.
Finally, by trial and error, they succeed,
but it's purely by chance.
The clever dolphins found a solution, but in this case,
there is no proof they used language to do so.
One of the more dominant female would pick a side,
pretty much the one that the male was already on.
Then he knew to go to the other side,
and he started playing with the ropes.
But then she was watching him,
and she started playing with the ropes.
So then that inevitably made them successful
because they both started pulling on the ropes
at the same time.
Now one of the two dolphins is removed
and replaced by a new one
that isn't familiar with the exercise.
This time, there's no trial and error.
The experienced dolphin
makes a few vocalizations to its partner,
and they open the container on the first try.
The experiment is repeated with yet another dolphin.
Each time, it's the same thing.
A few vocalizations are exchanged
and they get it the first time.
Whatever the instructions are, they translate into grasp
the other rope and pull it towards you.
The test is conclusive.
Dolphins do possess a kind of language,
not the same as ours of course, but a very different one
adapted to their own environment and communication needs,
a language we can't even imagine.
What's clear though is their ability
to exchange relatively detailed information.
(upbeat music)
With language, we can finally draw a parallel
between our two species.
Dolphins are in fact endowed with the five faculties
once believed to be exclusively human.
Dare we imagine that one day,
we might actually be able to talk to them?
Fabienne Delfour wants to think so.
In the Bahamas, she joins Denise Herzing
who runs the Wild Dolphin project.
Together, they're involved in a revolutionary undertaking,
speaking with wild dolphins in the open sea.
Is it a utopian fantasy?
The experiment Denise and Fabienne have been preparing
for two years could give us the answer.
It's interesting thinking about
how you would bridge a gap with a species.
Do you learn their language?
Do you expect them to learn your language?
Or do you build a mutual language?
And everything right now, in the wild at least,
tells us that when two species meet,
they create a temporary smaller vocabulary to communicate.
The idea behind the CHAT program
isn't for us to learn dolphin nor to teach the dolphins
to speak English but to find out if they're willing to learn
a simple common language to communicate with us.
Young engineers from Georgia Tech like Celeste Mason
have developed an electronic language
adapted to dolphins' vocal capacities.
Because they love playing with things that float,
the first two shared words to learn are scarf and sargassum.
Yeah, the way it's set up right now
is these two buttons turn it on.
Okay, so then it gets stopped.
The cord is what you're gonna hear
in the (mumbles) conducting headset.
Recording.
Did you hear that? -: Yeah, recording, yeah.
The keypad is set up
so that all our artificial whistles are on the top row.
They're basically toys,
sea grass which you'll hear in the headset and then scarf.
Scarf.
A couple of other toys.
And then we gave ourselves signature whistles now.
Oh, nice.
So I have a Denise whistle.
You have a Fabienne whistle.
I'll play mine for example.
Denise. (whistles)
Okay, I can hear Denise.
Okay, so again, you'll hear Denise
or your name in the headset.
And we have some of their signature whistles also.
So for example, Palette and Brad who are out here,
if you see them, you can also say hi to them
with their signature whistles.
To test the system, Denise and Fabienne
practice playing the way they'll do with the dolphins.
They ask one another for the objects, and then pass them
back and forth the way bottlenose dolphins naturally do.
(machine whistles)
(Fabienne speaks in foreign language)
[Fabienne Translator] I could easily hear the sounds
Denise was playing back.
It's perfect.
Thanks, Celeste.
(chuckles) Thank you.
So we had Fabienne's new signature whistle working,
which is good.
So when the dolphins are around, we would do the same thing.
We would model the system.
They're hearing it as a whistle in the water.
We're hearing it as a whistle as well as an English word.
So if the dolphins decide to get in the game
and they wanna play, they can mimic the scarf whistle,
and that essentially is a request
or at least a mimic of the whistle.
And we would give them the scarf,
and we would all play together.
(relaxed music)
It's a peaceful evening,
but the researchers are impatient for the next day.
Will they actually be able to exchange words
with the dolphins?
In the early morning hours above a sunken ship,
the dolphins join Fabienne, Denise,
and her assistant, Bethany.
Good news, Brat, whose signature whistle
is recorded in the computer, is here.
It's showtime.
Denise gets right to it and transmits the first whistles.
(machine whistles)
Brat seems interested right away.
(Brat whistles)
After whistling his name, he takes the scarf,
followed by two dolphins that start to play with him.
(dolphins whistle)
Denise asks him for the scarf.
(machine whistles)
Brat whistles his name
then tries to mimic the word for scarf.
(Brat whistles)
Bethany now tries with a piece of sargassum.
(machine whistles)
Brat identifies himself.
The dolphins get into the game but have trouble
pronouncing the artificial words of the invented language.
(dolphins whistle)
(suspenseful music)
(machine whistles)
(dolphins whistle)
They clearly understand what's expected of them.
But despite their best efforts,
their pronunciation is inexact.
After two hours, chilled to the bone,
the scientists leave the water.
They know they've made headway,
but there's still work to do.
[Fabienne Translator] We know the dolphins are interested
in the system and continue to interact with it.
They even try to mimic the sounds made by the computer.
However, the computer's not able to recognize
all their sounds.
It's like the software's programmed
to recognize the word pink, and some people
might say pink and others might say pank.
We know it's the same word that means the same thing,
but the computer isn't sophisticated enough
to make that distinction.
Once we fix the glitch, we'll have a clear operational
and efficient interface that will let us communicate
from dolphin to human and human to dolphin.
Clearly, another form of intelligence
resides in the ocean.
Every scientist we've met is convinced our two species
recognize each other as intelligent, sentient beings.
Dolphins live in a world of cognition
that is infinitely different from our own even though
it is very close on an emotional and social level.
Like them, we are gregarious and communicative beings.
We now know that in the near future,
we'll be able to establish true communication with them.
What will happen then?
What will we say to each other?
It might open up humans to not only conserve more
and respect the space and other species.
[Fabienne Translator] If I could communicate
with dolphins one day, I'd really like to ask them
to tell us what it's like to be a dolphin.
Well, if I could speak dolphin, I wouldn't say anything
to them except to ask a lot of questions.
[Fabienne Translator] I'd have them explain their world
in terms of the senses, what they hear,
how they interact, what kind of society they live in.
I'd want to know what they're afraid of,
what they most enjoy in life.
If I could understand whale, I think we could resolve
a lot of things, certainly a lot of questions.
And then we wouldn't have to keep them
in captivity to do research.
I'd like to better understand the relationships
that they have with each other.
These are things that the emotions and things
that you just can't quantify.
[Fabienne Translator] We'd finally have a portal
to another form of intelligence, another world,
and that's actually what's interesting.
As for Adam,
his life has taken a new direction.
Deeply moved by his adventure and armed with the knowledge
he gained alongside Fabienne, Adam has decided
to become an ambassador for the dolphin cause.
All right.
Did you have a good time?
High five.
He's joined the Whale and Dolphin Conservation,
a charity dedicated to the defense of sea mammals,
where he can share his experience with younger generations.
Now imagine if you could speak to a dolphin.
What would your first question be?
(majestic music)