Now, young dolphins learn a lot as they're growing up,
and they use their teenage years to practice social skills,
and at about the age of nine, the females
become sexually mature, so they can get pregnant,
and the males mature quite a bit later,
at around 15 years of age.
And dolphins are very promiscuous,
and so we have to determine who the fathers are,
so we do paternity tests by collecting fecal material
out of the water and extracting DNA.
So what that means is, after 28 years,
we are tracking three generations,
including grandmothers and grandfathers.
Now, dolphins are natural acousticians.
They make sounds 10 times as high
and hear sounds 10 times as high as we do.
But they have other communication signals they use.
They have good vision, so they use body postures to communicate.
They have taste, not smell.
And they have touch.
And sound can actually be felt in the water,