This Changes Everything

by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Sono-Pictorial Languages of Cetaceans,

  Sign Language and Vocalizations of Primates

  and

  Other Species’ Communication Modalities on Earth and Afar

  About one year before the MWC Delegation comes to me ALT, scientists in the USA and the UK are excited to discover that Jack Kassewitz can “speak dolphin.” His experiments are so mind-blowing that I wish I could show you the vid and research papers, right here. Suffice it to say that those of us who always believe in other species’ intelligence and have faith, in the absence of knowledge, that their modalities for communicating are as complex, intelligent and useful as homo sapien sapiens, are not to be disappointed or ignorant any longer, as of November, 2011.

  Kassewitz names the modality for cetaceans’ language “sono-pictorial” because, as he says, “We are beginning to understand the visual aspects of their language, for example in the identification of eight dolphin visual sounds for nouns, recorded by hydrophone as the dolphins echolocated on a range of submersed plastic objects.”

  He and his research partner, John Stewart Reid, use a lot of very interesting, innovative equipment, one of which is my favorite: a CymaScope instrument, a device that makes sound visible. Not just as sonic waves or digital wavy lines or colors: the CymaScope puts sound into pictures. Really.

  Not only do cetaceans communicate effectively, but check this out: they are telepathic and can send conceptual pictures—“sono-photographs”—to others in their pods! In these ways, they can warn of predators up ahead, send alerts about great food locales or “speak” across great distances about whatever they choose.

  Here’s the way Reid explains the use of the Cymascope: “The CymaScope imaging technique substitutes a circular water membrane for the dolphin's tectorial, gel-like membrane and a camera for the dolphin's brain....'Bio-cymatic imaging' [provides an image of the sono-picture] as it imprints on the surface tension of water, capturing the picture before it expands to the boundary.” Using the Cymascope allows humans to see almost exactly what the dolphins are seeing and sending as images.

  I also find out that the “codas,” click patterns of whales, have different “accents” depending upon what subspecies or species is communicating and where that pod usually lives. Cetaceans’ regionalisms and slang become a standing source of humor among humans, once we get the jokes.

  These jibes join the ranks of gestural language puns among primates and humans that sweep the globe in the 1980s and ‘90s, after Koko, a female gorilla, learns sign language. She learns English via ASL (American Sign Language) so well that she asks for and receives two kittens for pets. She names them “Lipstick” and “Smokey.”

  One of my favorite Earthisms: APC [After Public Contact], “Koko wants a kitten,” becomes the catchphrase for anything a nonhuman asks of a human when the request is a bit odd, but reasonable and kind of, well, cute. Imagine John Cleese, Spanner comedian and original member of Monty Python, intoning, querulously: “Koko wants a kitten, does she?” and you get the drift.

  Communication breakthroughs with primates, parrots and other “speaking” birds, elephants, canines and felines occur for centuries prior to this cetacean discovery and seems to “ice the cake” regarding interspecies communication. Once Earthers accept the existence of intelligent nonhuman life on Earth, it’s not much of a leap to accept its existence in myriad forms in our multiverse. But, knowing about and interacting are not the same, as we all know.

  Because of the Interspecies Communicators (fish) provided by the MWC, the clicks, whistles, barks, squeaks, tonal projections and other sounds I cannot think of names for right now that cetaceans utilize to communicate become (in 2013) comprehensible and replicable via software designed to translate human language into cetacean-speak and back again. Soon after, similar software mutually translates: primates’ gestures and vocalizations; birds’ sounds and head motions; tail and head movements, ear and tail twitches and changes in spinal positions, along with growls, whines, purrs, roars and barks of felines, equines, cattle and dogs; elephants’ trunk and ear movements, with their trumpeting, whining, chortling, growling, hooting.

  APC, how fast do we get here? There are humans who have synesthesia, overlapping wiring in their brains that provides for them a mix in their sensory inputs: some can taste colors, see sounds, recognize smells as having intensity like the volume of sound, hear tastes, or know numbers as tactile and dimensional figures. BPC, we do not know that these people are more advanced than the rest of us. Once we understand how valuable synesthesia is, synesthetes (known as Thetes) become primary translators and interpretators for humans with all other species.

  The most unsurprising piece in all of this is that nonhumans understand human’s languages almost immediately, whereas humans need translators or telepathy to understand nonhumans’ language, unless the human is a Thete. Think of how well your pets understand you, if you're human BPC, and you see what I mean.

  Thanks to the patient and creative computer programmers who do this work in consultation with geek Thetes, Earth’s fish are outfitted within two years (late in 2014) not only with the thousands of multiverse species’ languages the MWC provides but with all of Earth’s species’ languages as well. Then, the fun truly begins.