# What do you think happens when we put a baby orca brain in a baby human body?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-happens-when-we-put-a-baby-orca-brain-in-a-baby-human-body/1001762>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [May 19, 2024, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-happens-when-we-put-a-baby-orca-brain-in-a-baby-human-body/1001762 "2024-05-19T05:41:05Z")\
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**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2024, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-happens-when-we-put-a-baby-orca-brain-in-a-baby-human-body/1001762/56 "2024-05-24T00:15:41Z")

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> [@thorny\_locust](#):
>
> I think what we’d need would be some way to figure out whether orcas are using language, if not in our format. There are people working on that sort of thing.

A very good thread on that.

> [@Language: If whales had it, would we know?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/language-if-whales-had-it-would-we-know/62392):
>
> If whales sang love sonnets or expositions on philosophy and mathematics to one another, would we know about it? I suppose that this is a signal processing problem: given what we know about whales’ listening and vocalization abilities, is there an upper bound to the complexity of what they could be saying to one another? Ditto for elephants.

The question of how to evaluate intelligences very alien to our own, one that potentially solves different sets of novel problems than we do, is an important one, whether it is evaluated our fellow large brained planetary denizens, computer based intelligences, or potentially a non terrestrial one. Doing what we do is a myopic, even narcissistic, answer.

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