Deciphering Dolphin 'Talk'

Researchers spent three years eavesdropping on bottlenose dolphins living off the western coast of Australia.

Team leader Liz Hawkins, from the Whale Research Centre at Southern Cross University in Lismore, New South Wales, said: "This communication is highly complex, and it is contextual, so in a sense, it could be termed a language."

Dolphins were already known to use "signature" whistles to identify themselves to others. But the new research shows that they communicate at a far more sophisticated level, New Scientist magazine reported.

Ms Hawkins recorded a total of 1,647 whistles from 51 different pods of dolphins in Byron Bay, New South Wales. She identified 186 different whistle types, 20 of which were especially common, and grouped them into five tonal classes.

These groups, and in some cases individual whistles, were clearly tied to different behaviours.