"The researchers broke down each of these 30 behaviors into individual units. A side flip, for example, requires a dolphin to jump and land on its side -- for a total of two behavioral units."
This sounds so arbitrary. Why is jumping and landing counted as two units? If a dolphin jumps, it's going to land no matter what. Why not count it as just one point?
"Head butting takes four units, as two individuals jump, hit and use their heads."
Why four and not two?
"A simple turn involves just one unit, so does a forced blow of air out of a partially closed blowhole."
This is the only part that makes sense.
"After hundreds of hours of observation and analyses, the scientists concluded that dolphins perform simple, one-move behaviors more often than complicated, multi-faceted actions."
Or it could just be that it takes a lot more energy (and sometimes cooperation) to perform the actions which they happened to assign higher number of units to, regardless of their complexity.
"Scientists call this phenomenon the "law of brevity," and it exists in all human languages"
Or perhaps it has nothing to do with language, but everything to do with dolphins only being able to perform a limited number of actions that require lots of energy and cooperation.
