Dolphins have been declared the world’s second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as “non-human persons”.

Studies into dolphin behaviour have highlighted how similar their communications are to those of humans and that they are brighter than chimpanzees. These have been backed up by anatomical research showing that dolphin brains have many key features associated with high intelligence.

The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing. Some 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die in this way each year.

“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,” she added.

Dolphins have long been recognised as among the most intelligent of animals but many researchers had placed them below chimps, which some studies have found can reach the intelligence levels of three-year-old children. Recently, however, a series of behavioural studies has suggested that dolphins, especially species such as the bottlenose, could be the brighter of the two. The studies show how dolphins have distinct personalities, a strong sense of self and can think about the future.

It has also become clear that they are “cultural” animals, meaning that new types of behaviour can quickly be picked up by one dolphin from another.

In one study, Diana Reiss, professor of psychology at Hunter College, City University of New York, showed that bottlenose dolphins could recognise themselves in a mirror and use it to inspect various parts of their bodies, an ability that had been thought limited to humans and great apes.

In another, she found that captive animals also had the ability to learn a rudimentary symbol-based language.

Other research has shown dolphins can solve difficult problems, while those living in the wild co-operate in ways that imply complex social structures and a high level of emotional sophistication.

In one recent case, a dolphin rescued from the wild was taught to tail-walk while recuperating for three weeks in a dolphinarium in Australia.

After she was released, scientists were astonished to see the trick spreading among wild dolphins who had learnt it from the former captive.

There are many similar examples, such as the way dolphins living off Western Australia learnt to hold sponges over their snouts to protect themselves when searching for spiny fish on the ocean floor.

Such observations, along with others showing, for example, how dolphins could co-operate with military precision to round up shoals of fish to eat, have prompted questions about the brain structures that must underlie them.

Size is only one factor. Researchers have found that brain size varies hugely from around 7oz for smaller cetacean species such as the Ganges River dolphin to more than 19lb for sperm whales, whose brains are the largest on the planet. Human brains, by contrast, range from 2lb-4lb, while a chimp’s brain is about 12oz.

When it comes to intelligence, however, brain size is less important than its size relative to the body.

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.

Thomas White, professor of ethics at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, who has written a series of academic studies suggesting dolphins should have rights, will speak at the same conference.

“The scientific research . . . suggests that dolphins are ‘non-human persons’ who qualify for moral standing as individuals,” he said.

Additional reporting: Helen Brooks

http://www.timesonline.co...ttr=797084

dolphins should be treated better than people!

people suck!

elephants are smarter, cuter and they are land dwellers so we can live with them. they have long standing family relationships, great memories, they mourn their dead and females are great mothers. plus elephants are less likely to be killed for food than dolphins. but uh....we've got to do something about those damn ivory poachers. anyway. elephants 3....dolphins 2.

Dolphins are highly intelligent.

They have been known to come to a humans rescue

luv4u said:

They have also been known to try and penetrate women's vajaja.

just sayin.

lazycrockett said:

whatchu talkin' bout willis?

lazycrockett said:

there are reports of rouge bands of male bottlenose dolphins going and kidnapping females from other pods and raping them.

ehuffnsd said:

I bet dolphins know where the g-spot is.....

BklynBabe said:

what else would you use echolocation for?

lazycrockett said:

I don't believe you

actually...fuck dolphins. if we have to have love for sea mammals then I vote for orca whales and manatees. oooh they are just darling.

DesireeNevermind said:

orca's are actually the world's largest dolphin and not a whale.

ehuffnsd said:

well they look like whales to me.

you forgot to mention that manatees are sea cows.

ehuffnsd said:

DesireeNevermind said:

Orcas are dolphins


manatees are sea cows.

ehuffnsd said:

Leave Carnie Wilson out of this.

BklynBabe said:[quote]dolphins should be treated better than people!

people suck![/quote]

They are also ok at football

Very cool. I think it's been to our detriment to underestimate nature and other animals as badly as we have. We may be the most intellectually advanced species, but you wouldn't know it by our actions so far.

it's about time that humans recognized that they are not the most intelligent species.

i would love to see legislation protecting the rights of our fellow animals on this planet.

but, we cannot even abide by the legislation we have regarding our treatment of each other so what are the odds we will ever evolve sufficiently to treat other animals well?

ehuffnsd said:

And here´s me thinking you guys were talking about THESE penetrating dolphins:

http://www.vibrator-pleas...in&x=0&y=0

luv4u said:

Dolphins save surfer from becoming shark’s bait
A pod of bottlenose dolphins helped protect the severely injured boarder


Today show
By Mike Celizic
TODAYshow.com contributor
updated 9:57 a.m. ET Nov. 8, 2007

Surfer Todd Endris needed a miracle. The shark — a monster great white that came out of nowhere — had hit him three times, peeling the skin off his back and mauling his right leg to the bone.

That’s when a pod of bottlenose dolphins intervened, forming a protective ring around Endris, allowing him to get to shore, where quick first aid provided by a friend saved his life.

“Truly a miracle,” Endris told TODAY’s Natalie Morales on Thursday.
Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here

The attack occurred on Tuesday, Aug. 28, just before 11 a.m. at Marina State Park off Monterey, Calif., where the 24-year-old owner of Monterey Aquarium Services had gone with friends for a day of the sport they love. Nearly four months later, Endris, who is still undergoing physical therapy to repair muscle damage suffered during the attack, is back in the water and on his board in the same spot where he almost lost his life.

“[It] came out of nowhere. There’s no warning at all.

TODAY
Todd Endris
Maybe I saw him a quarter second before it hit me. But no warning. It was just a giant shark,” Endris said. “It just shows you what a perfect predator they really are.”

The shark, estimated at 12 to 15 feet long, hit him first as Endris was sitting on his surfboard, but couldn’t get its monster jaws around both surfer and surfboard. “The second time, he came down and clamped on my torso — sandwiched my board and my torso in his mouth,” Endris said.

That attack shredded his back, literally peeling the skin back, he said, “like a banana peel.” But because Endris’ stomach was pressed to the surfboard, his intestines and internal organs were protected.

The third time, the shark tried to swallow Endris’ right leg, and he said that was actually a good thing, because the shark’s grip anchored him while he kicked the beast in the head and snout with his left leg until it let go.

The dolphins, which had been cavorting in the surf all along, showed up then. They circled him, keeping the shark at bay, and enabled Endris to get back on his board and catch a wave to the shore.

Our finned friends
No one knows why dolphins protect humans, but stories of the marine mammals rescuing humans go back to ancient Greece, according to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.

A year ago in New Zealand, the group reports, four lifeguards were saved from sharks in the same way Endris was — by dolphins forming a protective ring.

Though horribly wounded, Endris said he didn’t think he was going to die. “Actually, it never crossed my mind,” he told Morales.

It did, though, cross the minds of others on the beach, including some lifeguards who told his friend, Brian Simpson, that Endris wasn’t going to make it.

Simpson is an X-ray technician in a hospital trauma center, and he’d seen badly injured people before. He had seen Endris coming in and knew he was hurt.

“I was expecting him to have leg injuries,” he told Morales. “It was a lot worse than I was expecting.”

Blood was pumping out of the leg, which had been bitten to the bone, and Endris, who lost half his blood, was ashen white. To stop the blood loss, Simpson used his surf leash as a tourniquet, which probably saved his life.

“Thanks to this guy,” Endris said, referring to Simpson, who sat next to him in the TODAY studio, “once I got to the beach, he was calming me down and keeping me from losing more blood by telling me to slow my breathing and really just be calm. They wouldn’t let me look at my wounds at all, which really helped.

A medivac helicopter took him to a hospital, where a surgeon had to first figure out what went where before putting him back together.

“It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle,” Endris said.

Six weeks later, he was well enough to go surfing again, and the place he went was back to Marina State Park. It wasn’t easy to go back in the water.

“You really have to face your fears,” he told Morales. “I’m a surfer at heart, and that’s not something I can give up real easily. It was hard. But it was something you have to do.”

The shark went on its way, protected inside the waters of the park, which is a marine wildlife refuge. Endris wouldn’t want it any other way.

“I wouldn’t want to go after the shark anyway,” he said. “We’re in his realm, not the other way around.”

all mammal , fish and poultry should be treated with respect and should not be killed for human consumption
[Edited 1/6/10 7:26am]

Why does intelligent = better treatment?

So smaller brained creatures deserve less?

Stupid.

Dewrede said:

Why is human consumption different from other animals eating other animals? Should they stop too?

^
humans in this day and age don't need to

animals have to , in order to survive

Dewrede said:

Well, I disagree. If you are designed to be an omnivore, you should be one...man made substitutes are just not good enough...talk about fucking with nature, exactly what a lot of people complain humans are doing in numerous other ways.

I'll never understand the vegan's argument of guilt and morality when it comes to consuming animals.

It's our treatment of them when they are living that matters, imo.

why should 'we' be omnivore just because we're 'designed to' ?
makes no sense to me

killing animals for human consumption is a barbaric and sickening practice imo

meat is murder


it's almost cannibalism imo ;

you are meat too ; veins , organs , bones etc etc

a pig's heart is hardly any different from a human heart
[Edited 1/6/10 7:59am]

Dolphins have no problem eating other living things, so I have no problem following their example.