How Intelligent are Dolphins?
Self-Awareness, Tool Use and Language System
Dolphins or cetaceans have large brains, significantly larger than those of monkeys and apes and second only to the human brain. This size indicates that dolphins evolved from complex interactions that made cognitive demands on their brains.
Recently, scientists have found evidence of high-level cognitive functions in cetaceans, functions that include self awareness, tool use and a sophisticated language system.
Self Awareness
According to a 2007 study of dolphin intelligence, dolphins can recognize themselves in a mirror, a rare ability that has only been demonstrated in elephants, great apes and humans. Mirror self recognition requires an understanding of the distinction between self and others; it also demonstrates an understanding of tool use – using the mirror to view one’s body.
Other studies have shown that dolphins are also aware of their own performance or learning states. They can listen to recordings of their own whistles and indicate which sound they produced has the higher pitch; this form of metacognition is a sign of higher thinking skills – the ability to reflect on one’s situation and make judgment on one’s learning state.
Tool Use
Cetaceans are known to make tools by breaking off sea sponges which they use as protective devices during foraging expeditions. They are also capable of using seaweed to disguise themselves in kelp beds and to close off their prey’s escape routes. Other studies have shown that they use algae for decoration in order to attract mates.
One dolphin named Kelly used gull-baiting as a strategy to get more feed. She placed fish on the surface of the water to lure gulls which she caught and presented to trainers for more feed (fish). Not only was Kelly able to master this “lucrative strategy,” she taught it to her calf. The behavior was passed onto successive generations until gull-baiting became a “hot game” for the dolphin family.
Language System
Dolphins have close to 200 different whistles that can be identified as linguistic labels for certain behaviors. They can express their emotional states; they can read the "body language” of other animals; they can communicate with human trainers through signals; they can transmit to others their resonant frequency, which coincides with the Schumann Resonance Frequency at 7.83 Hz, a frequency known to generate healing and calming effects.
A cetacean expert, Dr.Michael Hyson once swam with a dolphin named Liberty. He accidentally jammed his elbow into Liberty’s blowhole area. Liberty swam to the front of the human and protested vehemently about its mistreatment. It released a high intensity, low frequency sound that literally vibrated the chest hair of the remorseful Dr. Hyson. Liberty left no doubt in the doctor’s mind that what he did was unacceptable.
Dolphins have developed a global communication system that works by acoustic, perhaps even radio, frequencies. A recent breakthrough using the Cymascope to convert high definition audio recordings of dolphin echolocation into image prints is expected to lead to the building of a dolphin language lexicon.
Dolphins are self aware; their awareness also extends to their communities, suggesting they possess intelligence capable of cultural transmission of information. These complex behaviors and communication skills are not possible without a coordinated system of language use that is both functional and sophisticated.
How intelligent are dolphins? They are so intelligent man has much to learn from them.
Sources:
- De Rohan, Anuschka. “Deep Thinkers.” BBC Wildlife Magazine. July, 2003. 16-18.
- Horowitz, Leonard. DNA: Pirates of the Sacred Spiral.Sandpoint, Idaho: Tetrahedron Publishing Group, 2008.
- Marino L, Connor RC, Fordyce RE, Herman LM, Hof PR, et al. 2007 “Cetaceans Have Complex Brains for Complex Cognition.” PLoS Biol 5(5): e139. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050139
Dolphin Intelligence is Evident in this Picture.
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