Earthtrust Project Delphis

Building a Bridge between Dolphin and Human Minds

Dr. Ken Marten, the award-winning Earthtrust biologist, is a Mac-using mammal at Earthtrust’s breakthrough Project Delphis. He’s easy to spot: he’s the one without the fins. His mission? To plumb the dolphin’s complex aquatic mind in an effort to spare this friendly, intelligent species from destruction. It’s a race against time — to show what is being lost and fundamentally change the world’s perception of dolphins. In this crucial race, the availability of high-performance computing power is paramount, as Earthtrust programmers race to build a bridge between two complex “biocomputers:” the mind of man and the mind of the dolphin.

Sprechen Sie Delphin?

Investigating the “language” of the dolphins to discover a common human/dolphin language is no small task. Earthtrust President and Project Delphis creator DJ White likens it to the difficulty of putting a man on the moon. Earthtrust found the sophisticated tools it needed in Apple, offering superior imaging capabilities, coupled with raw processing power. “By harnessing the Power Mac, we have the power and visual tools we need to show the intelligence of dolphins in an unmistakable way, shattering myths about the dolphin mind,” says Marten.

“We have the power and visual tools we need to show the intelligence of dolphins.”

— Dr. Ken Marten, Research Biologist, Earthtrust

At Sea Life Park Hawaii, Earthtrust researchers set up custom underwater touch screens connected to Power Macintosh computers. Dolphins interact with the touch screens by interrupting a grid of infrared rays with their rostrums — what most of us would call their noses. Dolphins at the park are free to use the computers at their own behest, and they apparently find it quite entertaining.

Real Mammals Prefer Mac

By using Mac OS X and Macromedia Director on a Power Mac with Velocity Engine, the Delphis team has created a neural network system that combines real-time sound recognition with the interactive touch-screen interface. This allows scientists to observe the dolphins interacting with the computer images, as well as read digitized voiceprints of dolphin vocalizations and flexibly modify and play them back to the flippered computer jocks. Creating an entirely new cross-species language has never been done — Delphis’ approach to creating a common language is to use an intentionally artificial construct based on the whistles and clicks dolphins use to communicate with one another.

Each day at the park, dolphins and scientists collaborate over their Power Macs, making incremental progress in the work of making history. A whistle is generated by the Power Mac and played into the tank while the dolphins’ own computer monitor demonstrates the concept of “up.” As the concept is modeled and communicated via hydrophone to the dolphin, the researchers look for signs of comprehension through body language and vocalizations. When the dolphins begin to mimic each sound in the correct context, a small bit of a new language is born. One small step for dolphin, one giant leap for mankind.

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