Why dolphins are deep thinkers
guardian.co.uk
guardian.co.uk
Or they didn't. If it's real, why not prove if it's real?
If it was part of an experiment published 20 years ago, and it was conclusive that dolphins can think, presumably we would have heard of it by now.
Another anecdote to the mix:
A researcher wanted to do extensive, repeatable tests with dolphins to test their abilities in communication using a symbolic language. He'd gone to a lot of work designing a board that dolphins could "read" using echo-location, and designing a language (in the technical sense) with syntax, grammar and semantics.
When he described and demonstrated his experiment to the dolphin keepers, they were encouraging and supportive, but said it wouldn't work. When asked why, they said the dolphins would get bored and stop participating.
The researcher tried anyway, and initially got a great deal of success. Early results were promising, but needed repeating to make sure there were no statistical flukes (if you'll pardon the pun) or coincidences.
When he tried to repeat the experiments the dolphins refused to cooperate. When he tried harder to get them to cooperate, they physically swam under him, liften up, and pushed him out of the pool.
The dolphin keepers had successfully predicted the dolphins' behavior. They had a theory, which let them make predictions, which the researcher inadvertently tested and showed to be accurate.
Did it get written up? No. The researcher thought his experiments were a failure because he couldn't get the repeatability. The dolphin keepers weren't scientists, they didn't write anything up.
All this was reported by the keepers in a TV show I saw over 10 years ago, but it suggests several things.
People who keep dolphins believe them to be intelligent.
That belief leads to correct behavioral predictions.
Some researchers have trouble doing experiments, because the dolphins appear to refuse to cooperate on boring tasks.
So when that animal dies the experiment cannot be repeated and the research is pretty much over until they find another smart animal to work with.
So many of these animal experiments are very non-repeatable both in theory and in practice.
And btw, while I'll accept the point in theory, do you have any realistic examples of unrepeatable experiments in mind? Besides ones involving people, I guess.
Additionally, given that dolphins can apparently teach each other behaviors the entire batch of dolphins they've got in their research tank is contaminated by the first dolphin.
Designing experiments to determine if your test subjects are smart enough to mess with you is hard and it's harder if they all live together and gossip between sessions.
Had a quick look around for some info on this topic and came accros a great resource : http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/geopedia/Animal_Minds
I was looking for the study conducted on elephants (Payne, Katherine. National Geographic: "Elephant Talk." National Geographic: USA. August 1989) where they studied the infrasound communications of wild elephant herds. This one always struck me as significant, because it whispers to us of a vast and efficient network that would have spanned large areas of the African continent. I always thought of it like whale song, although being propogated through a denser medium it would travel faster and further (?). So maybe at some point during their ancient past, the elephant herds were in constant communication, following signs of water and congregating on grazing grounds and to mate/socialise.... I think this (like the dolphin superpods that have only recently been described in any great detail) shows of a formidable intelligence.
Best articles on dolphin intelligence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_intelligence
And analysis: http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2009/04/cetacea...
Its interesting to see that we try to use our language to communicate. Have we tried to understand their language or hear their sounds compared to what our words are? I could only imagine a dolphin language could/might be made....
"Not only do the dolphins understand the meaning of individual words, they also understand the significance of word order in a sentence. ... learned a vocabulary of more than 60 words and can understand more than 2,000 sentences"
And assuming EQ is based on some objective anatomical comparison of the brain...
Then Dolphins are 5.6/7.4 as smart as Man.
A rational society would be bound to protect the dolphins '75% human'-rights.
My position is that psychology is not [yet] a science.
Falling back on what we actually objectively know about dolphin anatomy [and subjective behaviour which does not contradict that] you would have to admit dolphins are possibly 75% as intelligent as humans, accounting for the huge difference in environment.
Does it not follow that they should have some form of protection under law as semi-intelligent beings?
One reasonable way to get a ballpark is to look at brain fold anatomy - I assume that's what EQ quotient in the OP is roughly equivalent to.
Rather than reduce human rights, I'm suggesting we act responsibly to all intelligent species.
If a reasonable physical measure of dolphin IQ puts it within an order of magnitude of a humans, we should probably not be killing such a species, for example.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/jul/03/research.scien...
"The ability to recognise themselves [dolphins] in the mirror suggests self-awareness, a quality previously only seen in people and great apes."
Fast forward to 2008
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080818220557.ht...
The researchers subjected the magpies to a mark test, wherein a mark is placed on the subject's body in such a way that it can only be seen in a mirror. When the magpies engaged in activity that was directed towards the mark (e.g. scratching at it), the researchers were able to conclude that these birds recognized the image in the mirror as themselves, and not another animal.