01x03 - Dolphin Dive

[bunniefuu]

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ We need you

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ Come on!

♪ When I need help, and I've got a question ♪

♪ there's a place I go for inspiration ♪

♪ Gotta get to the Web, check the girls' investigation ♪

♪ What girls?

[Izzie] ♪ SciGirls!

Whoo!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ I need you!

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[Izzie] ♪ Come on!

♪ You've gotta log on, post,

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♪ The time is right 'cause SciGirls are waiting, ♪

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[Izzie] ♪ We need you!

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[Izzie] ♪ SciGirls!!

[munching]

Izzie!

[garbled speech]

Huh?

[garbled speech]

Mind warp. Your mouth is moving,

but you're not saying anything.

[laughs] Come to think of it,

that's not all that different than normal

except that I can't hear anything!

[Izzie laughs] What's up?

Yeah, I know, I know you saw "Jet Pack Man"

for the th time this weekend,

but no amount of wishful thinking

is going to make flames sh**t out of your feet.

So you might as well just stop trying.

[sighs]

What's with the face?

[garbled speech]

Oh, you've got laryngitis.

Well, why didn't you just say so?

Oh... right... you can't.

Well, how am I supposed to communicate with you?

[garbled speech]

Yeah, uh-uh.

I know you're trying to tell me something,

but I need a little help understanding you.

SciGirls, comin' at ya!

Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Oof!

Hm!

Hey, that's interesting!

Hm, learning how to understand dolphins.

That sounds promising.

♪ ♪

[dolphins emit rapid clicking]

[dolphins emit high-pitched chirps]

Wow, you saw that?

One of them just jumped.

I know, superduper high.

I'm Cecilia, but all my friends

and family call me Ceci,

and I'm years old.

I love animals.

They're beautiful dolphins.

I'm Serena, I'm years old,

and my dream ever since I was

was to swim with the dolphins.

They're so smart, look at how they move that.

The dolphin center was called Dolphin Plus and they are

allowing us to do our own investigation.

Dolphins Plus has a lot of bottlenose dolphins

and a California sea lion.

I'm really excited to be going there for our investigation.

Look at...ah!

They move so smoothly and gracefully.

They're kind of like the ballerinas of the water.

Hi girls.Hi.

Are you Ceci and Serena?

Yes, you must be Jill.

Jill is a research scientist.

She also works at the University of Miami,

and she used to be a dolphin trainer.

[Ceci] Jill is going to help us figure out

a good investigation to do with the dolphins

and help us during the investigation.

Welcome to Dolphins Plus,

we're so excited to have you guys here.

I just want to tell you a little bit about our facility.

We are a natural seawater facility.

We have Atlantic bottlenose dolphins

and one California sea lion.

Hi. Hi, hi, hi, hi.

Everything we do here is really to promote conservation

and awareness about marine mammals.

How do you tell the dolphins apart

since you have like of them? That's pretty hard.

[Jill] It is hard at first.

We actually have this really great photo album that I would

love to show you guys, and this would be our first step

in helping you learn how to identify them.

Let's go check that out.

♪ ♪

This is our family album, and we have

a ton of pictures in here of each one of our dolphins

and some of the identifying features we use.

The dorsal fin is like a fingerprint.

There are no that are exactly identical.

So this is Ding's, very triangular and short.

That's L.B. Huge difference.

This is Mr. Elvis.

He has a very short rostrum.

The rostrum is their snout.

[Izzie] Hm, dorsal fin, rostrum--lots to learn!

He's one of the darker dolphins that we have.

Now, Miss Nica who looks very different from Elvis.

She's extremely slender, she has a very long, thin rostrum.

Overall, she's very petite.

Her dorsal fin is more triangular.

How old is Nica?

Nica just turned ,

and Elvis will be shortly, in a couple of weeks.

When did you first know that you wanted to work with dolphins?

[Jill] Well, my passion for the ocean started really young.

I was born in Miami, but I actually lived on a boat

with my whole family for about years in the Caribbean.

So I spent hours and hours every day snorkeling

some of the most pristine marine environments in the Caribbean,

and it really motivated me to pursue my studies

to hopefully one day make a difference.

I work at the University of Miami, so I teach undergrads,

I also run a nonprofit organization where I try to

bring marine science experiences to underpriviledged kids.

I have a -year-old who thinks

that it's normal to spend your life with dolphins.

[SciGirls laugh] [Jill] He is

the light of my life, he is amazing.

[Serena] After Jill gave us that ID book.

That gave us a really good idea of who's who.

I would like to show you this DVD that we have.

It is a bunch of different clips of dolphin behaviors.

So since they can't speak our language, we have to try

and make assumptions about what they're feeling or experiencing

based on what we call nonverbal communication,

so their body language.

[Izzie] That's what I have to do with Jake!

[Jill] These are orienting behaviors. What that basically means is,

that something has sparked the dolphin's interest.

The one I mentioned,

which is the one eye above the water is the craning.

[Serena] Yeah, we saw a lot of that this morning.

[Jill] They were checking you guys out!

Orienting means they're interested

in something going on around them.

So you guys ready? Yeah. Yeah.

All right, come on over this way.

[Ceci] We are going to do a structured swim,

where you're in a life vest.

The trainer gives the dolphins instructions to do tricks

and kind of interact with you.

Oh, here comes Elvis and Nica.

[Jill] This is Robin.

So this is Elvis and Nica.

You guys can slide on into the water.

Are you guys excited? [SciGirls] Yes.

They would get so close

that you just can reach out and touch them.

[Robin] They're going to move back and forth underneath your hands.

[Serena, laughing] It's so cool!

They're really smooth. They're soft.

Now, who's going to be the brave guinea pig

Go on out in front of me?

Bye Cecilia. Go Ceci go! Bye.

[Ceci] It's like a dream come true.

Every little kid wants to swim with a dolphin.

Perfect! [Izzie] Whoo-hoo!

Swimming with dolphins for the first time was very exciting.

That's perfect!

[dolphin emits rapid clicking]

[Izzie] Splish splash!

[dolphin chirping]

[Izzie] A kiss sandwich!

[SciGirls] Whoo-hoo!

[Izzie] Awwwww.

[Izzie] Hey, synchronized swimming!

[Serena] We got to rub their bellies, and they were

very smooth and elegant feeling.

It was amazing. They're so smart.

They all did everything the trainer told them to do.

They're like little kids, they like to play,

interact with each other, give presents, talk to each other.

[dolphins chirp; SciGirls laugh]

Some of them are more outgoing and playful.

Like Nica, she likes to kiss the cameras and everything.

But Elvis takes a little more time.

[Izzie, kissing] Mmmmm-wa!

That was just fantastic.

[Izzie] High !

[Jill] So what do you guys think so far?

[SciGirls] It's awesome. So much fun!

[Ceci] After we looked around, we talked to Jill

and started brainstorming ideas for our investigation.

I read about this test

that some scientists did

with elephants about their self-awareness.

They painted a white dot on their forehead,

and they put them in front of a mirror.

After a couple of seconds the elephant realized

that it was him, and he knows that the white dot

is not supposed to be there, and he tries to wipe it off.

How do you think dolphins would respond

to that self-awareness test?

Either it will think it's looking at another organism,

or it will recognize that it's looking at itself.

There's very few animals that can look into a mirror

and recognize that they're looking at themselves.

I think that we could definitely do something like this,

although the scale would have to be a little bit smaller

based on the time that we have here.

One of the obvious things here is differences in age.

[Ceci] The dolphins that we swam with today, Elvis and Nica,

they're like years old, right? [Jill] Yes, they are.

They were young enough still that they were curious

and playful and just really lively.

I think they might be perfect.

[Ceci] When we designed the self-awareness test we decided

that we would do a mirror test,

which was just showing the dolphins a mirror.

We would do a streak test, where we put a streak of zinc oxide

on the dolphin's rostrum and show them the mirror.

And we would do a control test,

which would be showing them the flip side of the mirror

to see if they were interested in the object

or if they were actually interested in their reflections.

[Izzie] Mirror, streak, control tests--got it!

In traditional self-recognition studies

you look for the animal to wipe the mark off.

Dolphins have fins that are not long enough

or they can't move them well enough

to actually wipe something off of them.

We could write down the behaviors that we see

and compare them to our list of the behaviors

that we've already seen on the video.

You basically just described something called an ethogram.

[Ceci] An ethogram is a, it's a kind of chart

that is used to classify different behaviors.

We wanted to make a simple ethogram,

so we combined behaviors into groups.

We have the ethogram, and we'll

do the first test tomorrow morning.

Cross your fingers they're very curious.

Yeah. I think they'll be curious.

This is why science is so cool!

So today is the first trial

of the mirror test without the dot.

What do you think is going to happen?

They'll probably be like, scared.

I don't think they'll be that scared of a mirror.

I'm going to record what I see,

and she's going to time the behaviors.

We timed minutes for each trial,

and in those minutes,

we timed the behaviors that the dolphins exhibited.

Robin's here to help us with this.

As we know, she is Elvis and Nica's trainer.

[Ceci] Every investigation has its constraints.

In this case it was the trainers having to be there.

It worked for the dolphins, worked for the trainers,

and it ended up working for us.

Let's see what happens.

♪ ♪

[Jill] Time starts now.

[Serena] She kissed it seconds.

[Ceci] That was kind of cool.

[Serena] That was cool. She's just like...

[Ceci] So she's kind of anxious getting into it.

[Jill] So maybe she's investigating

the surface of the mirror to see what that's like.

The first time Nica targeted the mirror

it was...wow!

It was just like oh my goodness;

she's looking at the mirror, she's figuring out what's this?

It was just so cool!

[Ceci] She's doing it again.

[Serena] Wait, I'll tell you, I'll tell you.

♪ ♪

Six seconds.

This is so cool!

[Jill] I can't even see her in the pool.

[Serena] Time. That was awesome!

Nica was curious about the mirror, and she touched it,

and she was looking at it a lot.

[Serena] Now we're testing Elvis.

Okay Elvis!

[Serena] He's looking at it underwater.

Where'd he go?

[Elvis chirps] [Ceci] One minute and seconds away.

Elvis was kind of scared of the mirror.

He didn't really want anything to do with it,

kept swimming away, didn't really want to be near it.

Kind of checked it out a couple times, but from a distance.

He probably thinks that what's in that mirror

is bigger than him.

[Serena] seconds relaxing.

[Jill] That behavior is called holding.

Okay.Time.

Elvis was not all that interested.

So our like, relaxing thing was holding.

The dolphins are trained when they're not sure what

they're supposed to be doing,

they hold on the platform.

So they put their rostrum on the platform, essentially they're

just waiting for instructions from their trainer.

Describe to me what she was doing to the mirror.

All I could feel was the mirror going like this.

[Serena] She was just kind of like going up and kissing it.

[Ceci] Sticking her nose up, kind of like with the camera lens,

that when you film the dolphins, they want to go up and kiss it.

We call that targeting.

She was coming up and targeting on it,

and she was touching it and exploring it.

We are very happy with the first test.

The first test gave us a lot of results

that we weren't expecting in minutes.

♪ ♪

[SciGirls] Whoo! [Izzie] Whoo-hoo!

So what do you think is gonna happen this time?

I think maybe Nica will be more investigative.

[Nica chirps]

[Serena] Okay, start.

Thirteen seconds.

[Nica chirps]

[Ceci] She's waiting for another command.

Nica, she did less because this time

Robin was giving her commands every minutes,

and she started holding more to look for more commands.

Okay, start.

[dolphins chirp]

[Robin] Elvis heading your way fast.

Elvis is heading to you, Lindsay.

[Jill] There's obviously a fear issue here with him.

[Ceci] Elvis did less orienting,

and he swam away a lot too.

He's just disliking this mirror more and more.

It's day of our self-awareness test.

We're going to do the rd trial of our mirror test.

Orienting?

Holding, seconds.

seconds.

Nica's kind of starting to give up on like, whoa, she's not

gonna tell me what I'm supposed to do, so I'm just gonna leave.

But Elvis actually stayed there

and started checking it out a little bit.

He wasn't swimming away as much at the end.

seconds orienting.

He might be getting used to it there.

Hi, I'm Cecilia.

Every day after school I come,

and I volunteer at my school's vet program.

Right now we're in the barn,

and here we have goats... [baaing]

miniature horses... [whinnying]

turkeys... [gobble, gobble, gobble]

Cochin chickens, [bawk!]

and pheasants.

Okay guys, bye.

[Ceci] ♪ The cutest trio in the world. ♪

So for our next experiment,

we are going to mark a line on their rostrums

and see how they react to it with the mirror.

♪ ♪

[Nica gurgles]

[Serena] Nica did a lot more targeting.

[Ceci] It was really interesting

because it kind of restored her interest in the mirror.

She's going to her left.

She started looking at it more, and it wasn't just targeting.

There was looking around too.

She came mostly to her right,

which was a good sign that she was noticing something.

[Izzie] Orienting, targeting-- lots of new things to learn!

Elvis kind of surprised me.

He craned a lot, and there was a lot of...

Going back and forth....look at this side,

then compare it to the other side kind of thing.

One time, he kind of stood in front of the mirror kind of

just looking at his right side, then he turned to his left,

then he turned to his right side again, looking into the mirror.

[Serena] So that was trying to tell us he's comparing a little.

I think that this kind of shows us that there's

a pretty good chance that they could be self-aware.

♪ ♪

[Jill] All right ladies, let's do this!

[Serena] seconds targeting.

♪ ♪

Nica, I think in this most recent trial, she was targeting

for longer periods of time, but at her eye level.

I don't know why she changed that.

She used to be targeting way up where Robin's hands were.

She was orienting more. Yeah, a lot more.

[Ceci] So was Elvis. [Serena] Yeah, a lot more,

[Ceci] Way more interested. [Serena] Yeah, that's good.

[Ceci] I almost ran out of space. [Serena] That's very good.

[Ceci] In the middle of our investigation,

we had to go through the Wildlife Center.

[Serena] We volunteer at the Wildlife Center,

and it's the greatest experience ever.

You get to clean cages and feed animals.

Hi Sophia! I'm gonna clean you up today.

She is around years old.

And that's Charles, he's like, .

So some of the animals that I take care of regularly

are the tortoises like, the Aldabras and the red-foots.

[Izzie] Boy, that salad looks good!

[Ceci] We feed them and get in their pen,

and we hose them down every day.

Don't forget under the arms!

[Serena] He liked it when we went to his head,

so sticking out his head for more.

The best part about it is when you do shows.

Hi everybody, welcome to the Science Museum. These are my friends.

It's a show where you bring out some animals

for people to look at and touch and educate them

on the animals that you have here.

Helping out these animals is like a small step for me

to be a conservation biologist.

♪ ♪

What if we had a toy we could put inside the dolphin's mouth?

They would pass by the mirror with the toy in their mouth,

and they'd probably be interested.

I like that idea. It could work.

♪ ♪

[Ceci] We ended up adding the toy test.

[Serena] We hoped that it would make the dolphins

more interested in the mirror.

seconds holding.

seconds holding without toy in.

[Ceci] Nica's first trial with the toy,

she was holding a lot,

targeting with the toy several times.

She was actually looking at the mirror a couple times,

but mostly just targeting with the toy and holding it.

Now we're going to do Elvis' first trial with the toy.

Elvis is away fast.

♪ ♪

We are looking for the toy that we have lost.

We need to go get another toy.

[Izzie] Elvis, what did you do with the toy?

[Ceci] He went to hide it. [Jill] That's not it, no.

[Robin] Elvis took the toy and stashed it somewhere.

[Jill] So we're going to try using his favorite toy,

which is this ball.

[Ceci] Okay, now he's playing with the ball.

But Elvis was just like, okay, toy, bye.

[Serena laughs] Let me go play!

[Ceci] He didn't look in the mirror one time.

Look how much data we collected for Elvis.

Not a good ethogram!

♪ ♪

[chirping]

What did you say, Nica?

[Nica clucking]

[SciGirls laugh] Whoo!

Nica, first trial did some targeting;

nd trial no targeting at all.

And with Elvis, the same thing

except this time he spy-hopped for seconds.

[Jill] Spy-hopping is when they lift their head

directly up out of the water.

So I guess they're more interested in the toy

than in the mirror.

Hi Everybody,

this is Serena. I love stuffed animals.

Here is my book and my -D glasses.

These are how these -D glasses look on me.

Aren't they very interesting?

This is a portrait of me when I was younger.

These are all my friends that have written on my board.

I have like, lots of jewelry, and there's a little ballerina.

These are my birds.

So this is all I have to show you right now.

This is everything cool about me.

[Ceci] During our control, we'll find out

if they're interested in the mirror as an object

or if they're actually looking at their reflection.

Start.

[Serena] She holds for seconds.

She targets one second.

[Ceci] She is just holding.

[Serena] She doesn't seem to be interested.

[Ceci] So this is trial one with Elvis with the control.

I think he's going to do the same thing as Nica.

[Robin] So are you predicting that this isn't

going to be so interesting? [Ceci] Yeah, probably.

[Serena] Gone seconds.

seconds holding.

[Ceci] The control of our test

showed us that the dolphins

weren't really interested in the mirror as an object.

That would mean when they were

interested in the actual mirror,

there's a good chance they were

interested in their own reflections.

So that was our last test.

It's possible that this time, they were just looking

at a plain brown surface, and it wasn't interesting enough

to even want to spend more than seconds in front of us.

But let's see what your data says.

That's how we make a story.

Out of all the time we've spent collecting this data,

you guys have worked really hard. I can't wait to see it!

[Ceci] We'll see you guys later. [Jill] All right.

♪ ♪

[Jill] Hi girls.

Hi.HH It's good!How's it going?

I'm very excited to see what you guys found.

We have graphs here.

Very nicely done, they look beautiful.

I like to graph because

it kind of gives me a visual representation of math.

What are they telling us?

[Ceci] So this is our orienting graph, and it shows the percentage

of time that the dolphins were exhibiting orienting behavior

towards the mirror during all the trials in the mirror test,

the mark test, the toy test, and the control test.

Here's our disinterest graph.

[Serena] And here is our targeting graph.

[Jill] Really nicely done. Now can we talk about

what these things mean, maybe starting with the orienting one?

[Ceci] So our orienting graph, we added up all the seconds

that they were orienting towards the mirror.

So we decided that that was interest in the mirror

as a reflective surface, and we decided to leave targeting

out of that because it was more of an interest in...

[Serena] Towards the object. [Ceci] ...in the object itself.

During the mirror test, Nica was orienting the most,

during the mark test is when Elvis was orienting the most.

So in the case where they're looking at just the mirror,

or they have a mark on their head, it looks like they were

spending more time orienting towards it.

In our targeting graph,

Nica was more interested in the mirror test,

and Elvis didn't target at all.

In the mark test, Nica targeted % of the time

and Elvis still did %.

[Ceci] Our disinterest graph shows the percentage of time

that they were disinterested in all the different tests.

During the mirror testand the mark test,

they were the leastdisinterested.

So you're noticing individuality.

Yeah, with like different levels of intelligence

or different ways that they learn things.

It's amazing you picked up on that in such a short time here.

What's cool about this, it showed there is a good chance

that they might actually be self-aware.

They're not behaving socially towards the mirror.

They don't think they're looking at another dolphin.

They are investigating the mirror's surface.

They are looking at their reflection, but whether or not

that's interesting to them, we don't know.

We should put these up on the Website.

This is a good starting point

for somebody else who wanted to pick it up.

Exactly, and that's where all good ideas begin,

from projects like this.

So thank you so, so, so, so, so much

for this opportunity.

I was very happy to have Jill working with us.

You guys did an incredible job

taking this from start to finish.

So you'll just have to come back and visit us sometime.

We're going to miss you. We will.

[Ceci] I'm very grateful to have this experience.

I had a lot of fun.

This is just a great opportunity,

and I'm so glad that I got to be there.

[Izzie] Mask-- check! Snorkel-- check!

At the end of our investigation, we decided that

we wanted to have some time to say good-bye to the dolphins.

[Serena] The best part of this whole experience was

watching the dolphins in the mirror, how they reacted.

It's something cool--it makes me

want to be a scientist just from the experience!

This experience has definitely given me some insight

into how the dolphins behave

and what amazing creatures they are,

and I'm definitely going

to take a piece of this with me.

We had a really nice last swim.

[Izzie] Bye guys!

Okay, to understand what you're trying to tell me

I need some information.

First, here's a control picture

of what you look like when you're happy.

Hold that!

Now I know if you make that face, you are unhappy!

Ugh, ah, ow, ooo, oo, ah!

Itching powder!

Okay, so this is how you look when you're itchy, and...

hm...hm...

yup, I think we're about done!

So now I'll know by the look on your face

and my knowledge of your past reactions

to different things how you're feeling.

[deep sigh]

[POP!] [Jake] Ahhhh!

Surprise!

Although it's starting to look a little bit like mad again.

Hmm! [garbled speech]

I still don't know what you're trying to say!

Hmm.

Ah.

Hey, I have green stuff stuck in my teeth.

Oh, this is so embarrassing!

You could've told me!

[garbled speech]

Yeah, I still don't know what you're trying to say.

Oh, the dolphins were easier to understand than you!