Now I know why they didn't finish the job.
Posted on 08/21/2006 7:26:19 AM PDT by presidio9
Dolphins are dumber than goldfish and don't have the know-how to match a rat, but they're so pumped full of happy chemicals they probably don't care one bit, a new study suggests.
For years, humans have assumed the large brains of dolphins mean the animals are highly intelligent.
But a new study by Paul Manger, a brain-evolution scientist from Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand, suggests it wasn't intelligence that spurred the dolphin's big brain -- it was the cold. To survive underwater, warm-blooded marine animals developed brains that have a lot of insulating material, known as glia, but not too many neurons, the grey stuff used for reasoned thinking.
"Goldfish can solve problems that dolphins can't. When a goldfish jumps out of its bowl, it's thinking past its immediate environment. Dolphins don't have the cognitive leap," Dr. Manger said yesterday.
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The same goes for whales because they share the dolphins' brain composition, he said, and could explain why dolphins get caught in tuna nets: They apparently just don't think to jump out.
And while dolphins can be trained to perform sequences of actions, he said, that could be more a sign of good training than intelligence, adding that stimulus-response conditioning is thought to show low intelligence.
Dr. Manger found that whales and dolphins do not have much of a frontal lobe, and that their hippocampus -- the section involved in memory -- is tiny. They instead have a "hyper-abundance" of insulating glia to overcome the thermal challenge, he said.
And while dolphins may not be as smart as people believe, they could be as happy as they seem. Dr. Manger said dolphins have a "huge amount" of serotonin, the brain chemical he describes as "the happy drug."
He drew his conclusions after spending five years reviewing and analyzing previously published data on cetacean brains. His peer-reviewed study appears in the Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.
But the head of the Vancouver Aquarium's cetacean research program says measuring intelligence by glia and cortex ratios could be as unreliable as the big-brain theory.
Lance Barrett-Lennard said the highly social networks of dolphins indicate they have strong social intelligence, and notes that cetaceans, like humans, rely heavily on vocal communication.
"A dolphin could have a brain the size of a walnut and it wouldn't affect the observations [that] they live very complex and social lives," Dr. Barrett-Lennard said yesterday.
"They keep account of who their friends are, with very complicated hierarchies and allegiances. The other thing is, they have spatial maps. They know exactly where to go when they need to look for certain food."
Dr. Barrett-Lennard theorizes that dolphins developed large brains because their buoyant, aquatic environment never required them to do any differently. In contrast, birds needed very small, efficient brains so they could counter gravity to fly, and humans faced similar needs to walk upright.
He fears that the pro-whaling lobby will pounce on Dr. Manger's conclusions to strengthen its argument that hunting whales is acceptable. "Intelligent or unintelligent -- we often use that as justification for how we treat animals," Dr. Barrett-Lennard said.
Dr. Manger said his research could help humans create a new approach for dealing with whales, dolphins and porpoises, and could change marine-management practices as well.
They obviously never saw the movie "Day of the Dolphins", LOL.
No wonder Flipper kept getting into trouble every week. /sarc
I knew they were smarter than a liberal but that is not saying much.
And they taste like tuna.
RIIIIIGHHHHHHTTT...well "So long and thanks for all the Fish"
Since the World Ends tomorrow...and the dolphins will be leaving tonight.
I'll never watch Flipper again . . .
Finally an explanation for my Thai girls addiction.
I can now blame it on low intelligence.
LOL, MA!
The statement by this assclown that a goldfish is smarter than a dolphin pretty well discredits the entire study.
I've spent alot of time on the water, some of it professionally, and have always thought that dolphins have an intelligence somewhere along the lines of dogs or wolves, which is a lot less than they've been given credit for, but still pretty good.. Whatever their intelligence level, they have a clear affinity and affection for humans that is deserving of our respect.
If goldfish are so smart, how come they will swallow a piece of poop, realize it is poop, spit it out, and immediately swallow it again, and again, and again,...
Now I know why they didn't finish the job.
I got a brother like that.
How much time have you spent in the water with Goldfish?... ;)
The idiot in this story is the scientist not the dophins.
Not very far past it.
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