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caio  ·  4809 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Discovery of Dolphin Language
So, there's one thing i don't get: how they discovered that dolphins think in pictures? The article says:

It has been suspected by some researchers that dolphins employ a sono-visual sense to ‘photograph’ (in sound) a predator approaching their family pod, in order to beam the picture to other members of their pod, alerting them of danger. In this scenario it is assumed that the picture of the predator will be perceived in the mind’s eye of the other dolphins.

Why? Because they have an echolocation system? But that doesn't tell us what they think, only how they locate stuff. After that, the article goes on assuming its sono-pictorial premise as right.

When Reid imaged the reflected echolocation sounds on the CymaScope it became possible for the first time to see the sono-pictorial images that the dolphin created.

How do they know the dolphins create these images? Our ears catch vibrations, but we don't talk like dolphins.

Another thing: they didn't say they showed the pictures created by the cymascope to the dolphins, only they played the sound back to them. Why, that tells us nothing of what's going on inside the dolphin's mind.

Am I missing something? Have I misread anything? Do our ears function differently from the dolphin's?

I tried looking for the paper on this, but the Cymascope site (http://cymascope.com/cyma_research/articles.html) only has an interview.