EPISODE · Jun 5, 2007 · 6 MIN
Dolphins get the point
from The Dolphin Pod · host The Dolphin Pod
You may recall from The Dolphin Pod episode titled “Herman's Dolphin Prodigies” that dolphins have proven themselves to be capable of understanding the human pointing gesture. Dr. Louis Herman and his research team have shown that dolphins, when given a pointing arm and finger gesture to indicate an object, understand that this gesture is a cue to the location of an object. This might sound like a very boring, elementary skill, but the ability to follow a pointing gesture is very rare in the animal kingdom. Even super smart animals like chimpanzees have a very hard time with pointing comprehension. Learn all about why dolphins understand pointing in this week’s episode. Transcript :: Read a transcript of this week's episode File Download (6:17 min / 5.8 MB)
What this episode covers
You may recall from The Dolphin Pod episode titled “Herman's Dolphin Prodigies” that dolphins have proven themselves to be capable of understanding the human pointing gesture. Dr. Louis Herman and his research team have shown that dolphins, when given a pointing arm and finger gesture to indicate an object, understand that this gesture is a cue to the location of an object. This might sound like a very boring, elementary skill, but the ability to follow a pointing gesture is very rare in the animal kingdom. Even super smart animals like chimpanzees have a very hard time with pointing comprehension. Learn all about why dolphins understand pointing in this week’s episode. Transcript :: Read a transcript of this week's episode File Download (6:17 min / 5.8 MB)
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Dolphins get the point
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