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.
OK
Yeah, that's why we have all the 'Goldfish Shows' around the country. Goldfish jumping in sync out of the water with hand and voice signals, jumping through hoops, etc... Boy, those goldfish are really some smart fish!
LOL
Those guys were classic.
BUMP!
I suspect this is deliberate Pentagon disinformation to create the perception that its laser-dolphins are ineffective.
Well, the Flipper who works for WABC 770 in NYC is pretty freakin dim.
A Doug Adams reference made it in the top 10!!
U would think more people would have piled on to that band wagon...
Well, there's a tiny artificial pool beside my house in a little garden; there's one goldfish been living in it for probably 8 years, no one remembers anymore. The thing has gotten huge, even though it rarely gets fed. Somehow it feeds itself....maybe goldfish are smarter than we think!
But the mangrove snapper gets my vote for smartest fish, at least for a fish that you see around alot.
Another commonality between dolphins and humans...horniness!
Newt, Flipper, Mrs. Newt, Sean
Pond koi (goldfish) can survive on algea and the occasional insect.
Brain size isn't a good indicator of intelligence.
Crows are very intelligent.... and Squirrels ain't dumb.
So long and thanks for all the fish
So sad that it should come to this
We tried to warn you all but oh dear?
You may not share our intellect
Which might explain your disrespect
For all the natural wonders that
grow around you
So long, so long and thanks
for all the fish
The world’s about to be destroyed
There’s no point getting all annoyed
Lie back and let the planet dissolve
Despite those nets of tuna fleets
We thought that most of you were sweet
Especially tiny tots and your
pregnant women
So long, so long, so long, so long, so long
So long, so long, so long, so long, so long
So long, so long and thanks
for all the fish
(yeah)
So long and thanks for all the fish
So sad that it should come to this
We tried to warn you all but oh dear?
(oh dear)
Despite those nets of tuna fleets
We thought that most of you were sweet
Especially tiny tots and your
pregnant women
So long, so long, so long, so long, so long
So long, so long, so long, so long, so long
So long, so long and thanks
for all the fish
Dunno. When I was scuba diving in Cozumel near an entire pod of 15 or 20 dolphins, and 4 or 5 of the "scouts" came right up to our faces to check us out, they looked pretty darned smart to me.
But then again I may have the IQ of your average Irish Setter.
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