Do Dolphin Signature Whistles Function as Names?

Bottlenose dolphins. Vince Smith, via Wikimedia.

It was not known whether dolphins could use signature whistles the way that humans use names; that is, as a representational label (a call that can stand in for an object the way a noun can in our language). So, in a new cross-modal experiment, researchers tested if dolphins could recognize familiar individuals from their signature whistle and the taste of their urine.

Read more at my Animal Minds blog: Dolphins Label Their Friends with Names.