Dolphins Are “Human” – New scientific research has shown that dolphins are so smart that they are almost human and are much more intelligent than chimpanzees.
Dolphins are not only the world’s smartest animal after humans, they’re so intelligent they deserve to be classed as “non-human persons.”
So say scientists who argue their research on dolphins’ brains shows it is unethical to keep such the animals captive in amusement parks or to kill them for food or accidentally through fishing.
Recent studies suggest dolphins have individual personalities and a strong sense of self, and can think about the future.
Bottlenose dolphins can also recognize themselves in a mirror and use it to inspect parts of their bodies, an ability previously thought limited to humans and great apes.
They can learn basic symbol-based language and adapt “cultural” behavior learned from other dolphins–all of which makes them likely more intelligent than chimpanzees, which are believed to be at about the intellectual level of a three-year-old child.
“Many dolphin brains are larger than our own and second in mass only to the human brain when corrected for body size,” said Lori Marino, a zoologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who has used magnetic resonance imaging scans to map the brains of dolphin species and compare them with those of primates.
“The neuroanatomy suggests psychological continuity between humans and dolphins and has profound implications for the ethics of human-dolphin interactions,” Marino added
What Marino and her colleagues found was that the cerebral cortex and neocortex of bottlenose dolphins were so large that “the anatomical ratios that assess cognitive capacity place it second only to the human brain”.
They also found that the brain cortex of dolphins such as the bottlenose had the same convoluted folds that are strongly linked with human intelligence.
Such folds increase the volume of the cortex and the ability of brain cells to interconnect with each other. “Despite evolving along a different neuroanatomical trajectory to humans, cetacean brains have several features that are correlated with complex intelligence,” Marino said.
Marino and Reiss will present their findings at a conference in San Diego, California, next month, concluding that the new evidence about dolphin intelligence makes it morally repugnant to mistreat them.
And that’s the latest news on dolphins are human.
Tags: animal, brain research, dolphin, dolphins, dolphins are human, fishing, intelligence
January 25th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
What is the source of the “new scientific research”?