Are Dolphins Not as Smart as We Thought? - Jennie Viratham Poonsawat

By Jennie Viratham Poonsawat

From Are Dolphins Not as Smart as We Thought? by Erik Vance

Though dolphin is considered in of the cleverest animals due to their brain and how it learns very quickly, are they really smart? Dolphins can communicate with others through their sonar and they also have some behaviors that other animals do not have like playfulness. Some researchers say that this animal is clever and can communicate in holographic images. In the first category is a recent journal by Paul Manger, reiterating his long-held position that the large dolphin brain has nothing to do with cleverness. Manger, an iconoclastic researcher with the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, has previously stated that the dolphin’s large brain more likely evolved in order to help the animal retain heat than to carry out intelligence. That 2006 paper was criticized by the dolphin research community. This new paper written by Manger takes a critical eye towards brain anatomy, the archeological record, and oft-cited behavioral studies, concluding that cetaceans are not smarter than other vertebrates and that their large brains may have developed for another purpose. Unlike in the previous one, he focuses on many of the behavioral observations, like the mirror recognition test profiled in the September 2011 issue of Discover, saying that they are whether incomplete or incomprehensive. A professional dolphin researcher, Justin Gregg says he respects dolphin’s developments in cognition research. However, he feels like the public and certain researchers have exalted them to a level of smartness beyond what the data, and that other animals can show many equally impressive traits as well. In his book, Gregg states experts who call into doubt the value of the mirror-self-recognition test, an exercise thought to indicate some degree of self-consciousness. Gregg notes that octopuses and pigeons can learn to behave similarly to dolphins when given a mirror. In addition, Gregg argues that communication has been oversold in dolphins. While certainly their whistles and clicks are a complicated form of audio signaling, he cautions that they show none of the hallmarks of human language for example encompassing limitless concepts or freedom from emotion). He also mentions attempts to use information theory which is a branch of mathematics with the information included in dolphin whistles, citing others who question either information theory is even appropriate for the communication. Gregg emphasizes that dolphins certainly portray many impressive cognitive capacities, but that many other animals do as well. However his animals of choice aren’t flattering: in the first chapter he claims that by many metrics chickens are as cognitively capable as dolphins. And then he states that dolphins can understand television screens.

Dolphins are quite an impressive animal in my point of view because of how they react with humans and other animals. They are quite clever and can learn new things very fast like in some shows we can see them jumping through the hoops. More importantly, this animal is very friendly with humans for some reasons and they don’t seem to be afraid to come closer to people. This article provides good information about dolphin’s intelligence and this is quite interesting for me.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/10/04/are-dolphins-not-as-smart-as-we-thought/#.U5U7XXJdWjY