# Do whales or elephants have any special abilities due to their large brains **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 7, 2016, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748 "2016-06-07T16:12:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/1 "2016-06-07T16:12:07Z")
Humans have three pound brains. Elephants are eleven pounds, sperm whales are eighteen pounds. Granted they are larger animals, but dinosaurs had brains the size of a baseball and they did fine. Do mammals with larger brains like whales or elephants have a larger Neo cortex, and if so do they have any cognitive abilities equal to or greater than humans? I know there is a correlation between animal size and brain size. But again, if dinosaurs can function with tiny brains what incentive is there for whales and elephants to have relatively giant brains? ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/2 "2016-06-07T16:48:54Z")
I have always wondered the same thing, I suspect they may have some kind of abilities related to navigation or other very specialized talents that require significant brain power. Looking forward to the replies here. ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/3 "2016-06-07T17:12:45Z")
Large brains don’t necessarily mean they are smarter or have greater cognitive capabilities than smaller brained animals. I trained dolphins, sea lions and Orcas for a number of years and didn’t notice they were incredibly smart, but I did notice they can find objects in murky water better than I ever could. I think their larger brains evolved because of the densely opaque environment they live in. Navigating and communicating with your fellow cetaceans while swimming in a very large, and very deep ocean presents challenges we can hardly imagine. If whales had evolved primarily on land I think their brain size would be similar to other animals their size. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/4 "2016-06-07T17:52:55Z")
Elephants are self aware. Paint a dot on an elephant’s face and show him a mirror. He will poke the dot with his trunk. A cat, for example will think he is looking at another cat. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/5 "2016-06-07T18:03:45Z")
One of the main reasons the Navy has been interested in training dolphins is to have them find mines and other underwater objects, which they are fabulously good at. One book I read (I forget now if it was Karen Prior or Ken Norris, both well-established dolphin trainers and/or researchers), mentioned that they can easily find a dime buried in the mud. Dolphins, not being magnetic, don’t actually blow up the mines and themselves. They just plant little flags in the mud where they find them. And they aren’t used for placing magnetic bombs on the hulls of ships either, like you saw in _Day of the Dolphin_. The Navy wouldn’t dare use them in ways that actually endanger the dolphins – they are waaaay to valuable and expensive for that. It takes a whole lot of money and lots of years to buy, maintain, and train those dolphins. If the job were deadly dangerous, they much sooner use human divers – much cheaper. (Source: An actual Navy dolphin trainer.) Researchers have puzzled for years over just what dolphins and whales are doing with those huge brains, with the highly evolved cortex, but nobody has really solved that. It’s generally assumed that they must be doing _something_ with all that brain. There have been a few projects that attempted to teach some kind of “language” to dolphins, sort of like all those chimpanzee language projects. Probably the most extensive and most definitive, but with the least over-optimistic expectations, was done by Louis Herman et al, published in 1984. Full text (PDF, about 90 pages) here: [Comprehension of sentences by bottlenosed dolphins](http://www.google.com/url?q=http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url%3Furl%3Dhttps://www.researchgate.net/profile/Louis_Herman2/publication/16654959_Comprehension_of_sentences_by_bottlenosed_dolphins/links/54f13cc90cf2b36214ab7de8.pdf%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26scisig%3DAAGBfm2iUUgI01dd-dEr2ds9PRoRZdTFMA%26nossl%3D1%26oi%3Dscholarr&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwib9bOnvpbNAhVJy2MKHZWxCQcQgAMIFigA&usg=AFQjCNFaiK2_L1mcN9xOkbLzSTMbc6CZdQ). (Note the list of names in the acknowledgements just below the abstract at the bottom of the first page. Yes, one of them is me.) We never asked them to produce sentences, only to understand simple 2-to-5-word “sentences” that we gave them. They did quite well at that. I came away with the impression that that was about their limit in that area. Herman et al did many more years of research on dolphin cognition, both before and after my time on the project. I think one could easily google up a lot more of his published articles, of which there were quite a few. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/6 "2016-06-07T18:14:52Z")
It’s the [Braine to Body Mass Ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio) that seems to be important. Note where chimps and dolphins lie on the curve. And we know that dolphins are among the “smartest” mammals around. They use tools, recognize themselves in a mirror and are speedy learners. Elephants pretty much the same, and both live in complex social groups (like us apes). ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/7 "2016-06-07T18:17:18Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Elephants are self aware. Paint a dot on an elephant’s face and show him a mirror. He will poke the dot with his trunk. A cat, for example will think he is looking at another cat. There have been some studies doing that with dolphins too. I’m not sure if Herman ever did that. But a google search for dolphin self awareness research turns up several research reports. Here is one by Diana Reiss from 2001: [Mirror Self-Recognition in the Bottlenose Dolphin: A Case of Cognitive Convergence](http://www.google.com/url?q=http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url%3Furl%3Dhttp://animalstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi%253Farticle%253D1039%2526context%253Dacwp_asie%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26scisig%3DAAGBfm0VCYOBhyvpclk6hD3r-Ix4oVTxng%26nossl%3D1%26oi%3Dscholarr&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwioupjIwZbNAhVI-mMKHRJbD3kQgAMIFCgA&usg=AFQjCNHJxTy5UxbsZ4wvdCEQgSZYTnMpkg) (clean PDF). Reiss did some early dolphin language research too – I worked on her project for a few weeks in its earliest days circa 1979 – but I think she also moved on to more general dolphin cognition studies. She also worked with Irene Pepperberg on her Alex The African Grey Parrot project. Hey, parrots are smart too! ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/8 "2016-06-07T18:19:19Z")
Octopuses pass the mirror test, too, folks! There is increasing evidence that this is not so unusual. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/9 "2016-06-07T18:38:22Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > It’s the [Braine to Body Mass Ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio) that seems to be important. Note where chimps and dolphins lie on the curve. > > And we know that dolphins are among the “smartest” mammals around. They use tools, recognize themselves in a mirror and are speedy learners. Elephants pretty much the same, and both live in complex social groups (like us apes). Opposable thumbs are also probably important. Your opinion that dolphins are the “smartest” seems to disagree with **dolphinboy** , Post #3: “I trained dolphins, sea lions and Orcas for a number of years and didn’t notice they were incredibly smart, but I did notice they can find objects in murky water better than I ever could.” My impression falls right in the middle: Many observers have suggested that dolphins are relatively “up there” in brainpower, but below the apes, dogs, pigs and I think elephants. I tend to agree with that. I suspect we tend to evaluate animals’ smarts relative to what we “expect” of them. Dolphins seem to be brilliantly clever _for a critter that lives in the sea, looks like a fish, and has no arms, fingers, hands, nor opposable thumbs._ (Notwithstanding [this report](http://www.theonion.com/article/dolphins-evolve-opposable-thumbs-284) of a dolphin that evolved opposable thumbs. But hey, that’s The Onion.) No matter how long we humans work with dolphins, it just always seems to be surprising that they behave so much, like, y’know, _mammals!_ Whoda thunk? > [@Douglas Adams](#): > > It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons. BTW, I see we’ve done this topic before. [Could a human level intelligence species evolve in the oceans?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=716222) at least for the first half-page of posts or so, before the thread went a bit off the rails. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/10 "2016-06-07T18:41:28Z")
I find it interesting that their have been stories where dolphins and whales have been caught in nets and have sought out humans for aid. Same where elephants who have become injured have come to humans for aid. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/11 "2016-06-07T18:48:32Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > I find it interesting that their have been stories where dolphins and whales have been caught in nets and have sought out humans for aid. Same where elephants who have become injured have come to humans for aid. There have also been stories of various wild dolphins who decided to hang out in coastal waters where lots of people tended to swim, and hang out with the people. That always creates a lot of buzz. Nobody knows exactly why a wild dolphin would do that. One common speculation is that these dolphins are somehow misfits that have been rejected by their herd, and they approach humans to deal with their needs for social interactions. Dolphins are in fact extremely social animals, and they have a lot of behavior patters that are consistent with that. There is a lot of overlap between human social behaviors and dolphin social behaviors, which could explain why a dolphin (particularly, a dolphin once tamed) would get along so well with people. People see, correctly, a whole lot of very humanly recognizable behaviors in dolphins, and this also promotes the notion that they are so very smart – so much _just like us!_ ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/12 "2016-06-07T18:55:23Z")
Storage space. That’s why they never forget. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/13 "2016-06-07T19:00:16Z")
We can’t have a responsible discussion here without addressing the problem of _anthropomorphism_ – that is, the tendency to believe too easily that animals that seem _just like us_ in one way or another are, in fact, just like us. The question comes up especially in investigations into animal cognition. How much do they actually _think_ like us? Nobody knows, and nobody _can_ know, for sure. There is one train of thought, deeply entrenched in comparative cognitive psychology, that we can’t possibly know what an animal’s thoughts and perceptions might be like, and therefore, we must approach them from the assumption that _they have no cognitive experience at all._ According to this view (popular through the earlier 20th century), the only things we can observe about animal behavior are the stimulus (input) and response (output), so that’s all we should study. We can’t possibly study the thinking, feeling, emotions, and conscious decision-making (if any) that happens in between the input and the output, so we just ignore that and treat it like it doesn’t exist. This is sometimes referred to as SR theory (or S/R), for stimulus/response. It presents a highly mechanical view of organisms that are simply hard-wired to make various particular responses to various stimuli, with no “feeling” in between. One corollary to this view, commonly seen as very bad these days, is that there is no moral compunction against using animals for live experiments, even gruesomely torturous experiments, even if animals screech in agony. After all, it’s just a response to a stimulus, is all. Animals don’t actually have any feelings or emotions, you know . . . See next post for an opposing view, more popular these days . . . ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/14 "2016-06-07T19:14:02Z")
Then there are those who seem to think that animals, like humans, must have some conscious cognitive experience too, whatever that may be like. This has become more popular in recent decades. This is called SOR theory, the “O” representing an open circle, representing the mysterious conscious cognitive experience that animals may have in between their S and R. In other words, they actually have feelings and emotions and maybe even thoughts and opinions, and they can make willful decisions about how to respond. (Gee, this guy is tormenting me. Should I bite, or run away?) We still don’t know what that internal experience might be like for an animal (hence the empty circle “O” to represent it), but we suppose that it exists and is there. The _anthropomorphic_ problem, of course, is the tendency of people to suppose that the animal’s internal “O” experience must be something similar to humans’ internal “O” experience. Nobody really knows this, so anthropomorphic assumptions about animals are highly discouraged in the field of comparative psychology. (A bit of terminology here: “Comparative psychology” refers to the study of non-human animal psychology, typically with the idea of comparing it to people psychology.) And this is where a lot of the thinking arises about dolphins being so smart. There really are a lot of complex behaviors that dolphins do, that just seem so humanly recognizable and, supposedly, understandable – that leads people to suppose that their internal “O” experience must be quite human-like. And humans exercise quite a lot of higher intelligence in their complex behaviors, so dolphins must too, right? The only actual answer to that, really, is “Well, maybe.” But wait, there’s more! An argument exists that highly humanly recognizable SOR behavior patterns may in fact imply some human-like “O”! More in the next post! . . . ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/15 "2016-06-07T19:29:35Z")
There’s a philosophy of science, commonly called “Occam’s Razor”, that says something like this: If you have a body of observed evidence, and some competing theories to explain that evidence, your best bet is to go with the simplest of those theories. No need to accept a theory that is more complicated than necessary. Such a theory might explain even more than the observed data, and is more likely to prove all wrong. Now, human intelligence is quite complex, and so any theory attempting to explain human intelligence much be quite complex. There certainly seems to be a lot of “O” in human SOR behavior. Nobody really disputes that. Now, what about dolphins? We’ve already come to the point of believing that dolphin behavior, elaborate as it is, must have a lot of “O” too. But anything similar to human “O”? Well, consider this. Dolphin behavior is not only complex, but seems highly “relatable” to a lot of people. We see a lot of high-level dolphin behavior and a lot of it seems very similar to how a person might act, sometimes in very detailed ways. (At the risk of dominating this thread even more that I already am, I might post some examples.) One would think, that if dolphin “O” was elaborate but very different from human “O”, then the complex responses to complex stimuli would be… well, complex, but very different. And yet, we see dolphins doing a lot of things similar to humans (thinks like playing with toys or playing obvious practical pranks on the trainers – Yes, I have anecdotes!) One wonders, then: How could it be that dolphins, if their “O” were very different from human “O”, would behave in complex ways that humans find recognizable, instead of behaving very differently. (Contrast, for example, with the things octopuses do.) It seems hard to believe that dolphins could have evolved an internal consciousness that is utterly alien to humans, yet which produces such similar behaviors. This leads us to propose that dolphins internal “O” must actually be a lot like human “O” at least to some degree of similarity, and that this is actually the most simple theory, compared to any alternative. Thus, an anthropomorphic theory that dolphins are similar to humans actually becomes the Occam’s Razor preferred theory! This view, once highly rejected, has come to be much more accepted lately. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/16 "2016-06-07T19:37:18Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Opposable thumbs are also probably important. > > Your opinion that dolphins are the “smartest”… “Among the smartest” is what i said. It’s right there in the post you quoted. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/17 "2016-06-07T20:01:34Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Elephants are self aware. Paint a dot on an elephant’s face and show him a mirror. He will poke the dot with his trunk. A cat, for example will think he is looking at another cat. Here is a short video demonstrating elephants recognizing themselves. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/-EjukzL-bJc/maxresdefault.jpg "Mirror Self-Recognition in Asian Elephants!") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EjukzL-bJc) ---
**Author:** ![RedSwinglineOne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a9adbd/32.png) [@RedSwinglineOne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedSwinglineOne)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/18 "2016-06-07T20:14:56Z")
[Study: Dolphins Not So Intelligent On Land](http://www.theonion.com/article/study-dolphins-not-so-intelligent-on-land-1896) ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/19 "2016-06-07T21:06:38Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > It’s the [Braine to Body Mass Ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio) that seems to be important. Note where chimps and dolphins lie on the curve. > > And we know that dolphins are among the “smartest” mammals around. They use tools, recognize themselves in a mirror and are speedy learners. Elephants pretty much the same, and both live in complex social groups (like us apes). Augg, that’s a horrible graph. It looks OK in the source document, but somehow the text is all in the wrong place in Wikipedia. There has to be a Wikipedia editor or two reading this-- can one of you cut and paste that graph again from the source into Wikipedia? ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748/20 "2016-06-07T22:36:46Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > Augg, that’s a horrible graph. It looks OK in the source document, but somehow the text is all in the wrong place in Wikipedia. > > There has to be a Wikipedia editor or two reading this-- can one of you cut and paste that graph again from the source into Wikipedia? The graph is on Wikimedia Commons. I don’t mess with their turf. Also this isn’t a cut-and-paste job, it’s a conversion of the original image into an [SVG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics) file. Clearly the conversion went awry. It’s common for simple images to be converted into SVG files when possible on Wikimedia projects for multiple reasons. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-whales-or-elephants-have-any-special-abilities-due-to-their-large-brains/756748.md?page=2)