The Nature series on PBS had an amazing doc the other night on whales and dolphins and their strategies for catching fish. These aren’t the result of instincts that every individual is born with, but separate strategies that groups in different parts of the world have thought out according to the environment they live in.
For instance, in shallow waters in the Gulf of Mexico, dolphins will swim ahead of a school of fish and, using their tail flippers, kick up two walls of cloudy silt in a V formation that funnels the school into the narrow end, where the dolphins sit and easily pick off the fish. The same principle was used by humans in shallow rivers: lay rocks in a V shape to force the fish into the narrow end. And plains Indians did the same to guide herds of buffalo into a pound or over a jump.
Off the coast of Alaska, members of a whale pod, each with a specific task, contained a school of fish and forced them to the surface where the whales moved in for easy pickin’s. It was a complex process that required coordination and timing to work, and they pulled it off. Without our manual dexterity, they obviously don’t possess the technical skills we have, but is it too great a leap to say their problem-solving intelligence is on a par with ours, or even greater?
I’ll do your examples one better: whales actually have art and/or culture. That is to say, not only will whales of similar species but different geographical areas sing differently depending on which pods they hail from ; but a given song can become “popular” and travel across pods and geography, either through outcasts joining a new pod and teaching them their song, or simply pods hearing the song and carrying it themselves.
Another one: dolphins know about playing. They’ll blow air bubbles and manipulate them just like smokers blow smoke rings. They’ll also mock-hunt fish, give them a love bite and move on. Dolphins have even been known to cooperate with humans, herding fish towards beaches where humans set up nets and getting “paid” with some of the catch. All informally and without any training.
Of course, they’ll also rape each other regardless of sex, so there’s that. But it’s all in good fin. Fun. Whatever.
IMO, yes. Being human, it’s easy for us to downplay our abilities (and wish that animals’ cognitive abilities were a little closer to ours). But in reality a human at age 2 can already solve some comparatively complex problems, let alone an adult human.
I’ve got Nature on series record, so I get all the shows. It was always good, but it’s gotten a lot better of late. I started watching this one last night, and was blown away by the photography. In HD, this is far and away the most amazing filming of cetaceans I have ever seen. And I was sooooo pleasantly surprised when I saw the 3 hour designation wasn’t a mistake! I’m only 1/3 of the way through, and am really looking forward to the other 2/3s.
Well that blows me away, too. Makes me wonder if they can count, or even have mathematics of some kind. I’d like to know how much of their communication we understand (which I’m going to look into when I finish this post). I did know that dolphins have been known to start picking on a member of their group until they drive it away, presumably for a good reason from the pod’s point of view that we can’t see. I’ve seen pigs do it on my uncle’s farm too, and they’re considered a relatively intelligent animal.
Was that on porpoise?
Yeah, I’m trying keep the “Wow, neat-o!” reaction under control, but hey, I’m only human. But you have to admit that the level of logical and social intelligence it takes to do what those animals did was greater than a two-year-old human’s, far greater I’d say.
We have standard TV but the technical quality of the production was still impressive. You won’t be disappointed with the rest of the program. If it’s repeated this weekend, I’m going to record it for sure.
I say we resume hunting them for meat, only the cleverest will elude us, and then that selection pressure will eventually produce fully sentient cetaceans. And eventually they will fight back and go to war with us with technologies undreamed-of, and that in turn will boost our average mental capacity by attrition-of-the-slow and so on. Win-win!
I did wonder, if they were land animals with their intelligence, if we’d have serious competitors for the top of the food chain, but it doesn’t look like it:
Getting back back to your tongue-filled cheek, that would actually be a good idea in the long run. We humans are acting rather irresponsibly with no competitor to check our behaviour. We need something that restricts our population and over-consumption. So yeah, win-win.
I don’t get that. If you’re referring to cetaceans not having the ability to do that, it was already covered in the OP: “Without our manual dexterity, they obviously don’t possess the technical skills we have…”
Yes, it’s a pretty big leap. I find it hard to believe that whales would just love to record new algebraic theory for catching fish, but are cursing to themselves "damn these stupid fins! "
But really, I can’t see how there would be an evolutionary purpose for whales in having human-like level of intelligence. I think that’s too simplistic. For whales, I think it would actually be an evolutionary disadvantage.
I was thinking more along the lines of counting. If one sees a school of fish, what does it communicate to the others? “There’s a hundred fish in that school. Let’s get 'em.” or “Only ten fish, never mind.” Probably more like, “Lots of fish, let’s get 'em” or “Not many fish, never mind.”
This web page from the Dolphin Research Center says they seem to have at least the first rudimentary concepts of numbers, but nothing like what my excited imagination conjured. Like you say, there’s no evolutionary incentive for them to become math nerds.
Thanks for fighting my ignorance. That’s what I get for not watching South Park.
Tastes fishy. Not at all like chicken. Except the ones raised on chicken fish. Then it’s southern deep fried goodness.
A creature that can grasp the concept of forming a funnel-shaped obstruction to direct its prey–exactly what our hunter/gatherer ancestors did–does strike me as eerily human-like and I think deserves some kind of attention. But as far as granting them personhood, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there just seems something naive and/or self-aggrandizing about it, like we’d be conferring the title of Honourary Humans. I’d go along with it on one condition: if we’re going to respect them as equals, we should do the respectful thing–ask their permission first.
There’s also the problem that the concept of intelligence is relatively anthropocentric – I mean, how do we gauge intelligence? Through measuring somebody’s aptitude at certain kinds of problem-solving. What kinds of problems those are, though, is largely arbitrary; so ultimately, calling somebody intelligent is kind of tautologous: somebody good at solving these kinds of problems is good at solving these kinds of problems. But different problems than those that pertain to humans presumably pertain to dolphins; so how should we create an ‘inter-species’ concept of intelligence?
I think the personhood thing is politics, not science or philosophy.
It’s great if it helps to reduce whaling, but taking the suggestion seriously would open up quite the can of worms, and lead to contradictions and incoherency in how we define “person”.
But you have to admit that the level of logical and social intelligence it takes to do what those animals did was greater than a two-year-old human’s, far greater I’d say.
