STUDY: DOLPHINS NOT SO INTELLIGENT ON LAND
February 15, 2006 Issue 42-07
GAINESVILLE, FL—Although dolphins have long been celebrated for their high intelligence and for appearing to have a complex language, a team of researchers at the University of Florida reported Monday that these traits are markedly less evident on dry land.
According to study researchers, a group of 25 bottlenose dolphins removed from their holding tanks failed 11 exercises designed to test their basic cognitive abilities and reasoning skills."The dolphins were incapable of recognizing and repeating simple gestures," said study co-author Dr. Scott Lindell. "Their non-verbal communications were limited to a rapid constriction and expansion of the blowhole, various incomprehensible fin motions, and heavy tremors while they lay prone on the lab table." After capturing the dolphins from the ocean, Lindell and his colleagues tagged them and placed them under the intense, high-wattage lights of a moisture-proof lab. The researchers then administered an extensive battery of tests designed to measure everything from the dolphins' self-awareness to their aptitude for writing and reading comprehension.
"Dolphins have a popular reputation for being excellent communicators," Lindell said. "But our study group offered only three types of response to every question we posed: a nonsensical, labored wheezing, an earsplitting barrage of unintelligible high-pitched shrieks, and in extreme cases, a shrill, distressed scream."
Even the dolphins' proven ability to navigate through a form of sonar called echolocation was ineffective on land.
"The military has claimed great success in training these mammals, utilizing their echolocation skills to detect mines that have been placed underwater," said Lindell, who conducted a similar experiment in a concrete parking lot. "We were unable to replicate this finding ourselves."
Lindell added: "In most cases, the dolphins succeeded in finding land mines only when we placed them directly on top of the mines."In another test, several pounds of mackerel were placed on the ground, separated from the test dolphins by only 20 feet of concrete. The dolphins were unable to reach the food and feed themselves.
Despite their failures in the initial series of tests, the animals were given further opportunities to demonstrate their intelligence on land. The dolphins were unable to display novel behaviors, use a map to pinpoint their location on campus (spatial reasoning), or complete a simple obstacle course and wall climb.
"Their learning curve was actually negative," Lindell said. "The more time we gave them to complete basic land-based tests, the more pitiful their efforts became, with many of them opting to bask in the sun rather than perform a simple task."
"In some cases," Lindell added, "the dolphins appeared to be looking directly into our eyes, as if pleading with us to help them perform better in these tests."
Many scientists believe these findings may help to explain why dolphins, for all their vaunted intelligence, have never developed technology or agriculture, or harnessed the power of fire—skills still exclusively in the domain of Homo sapiens. Said Lindell: "Their failure is a great disappointment to all of us who once felt an intelligence-based kinship with these majestic animals."
Much thanks to THE ONION
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posted by LAURELiCIOUS @ 11:32 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
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This comment was submitted to me by my friend "Crusty" reinforcing the hypothesis that Dolphins are not as intelligent as previously believed:
"I wonder why that is, I can play chess underwater with a dolphin and win most of the time. Maybe they aren't as smart as we thought because I am not that good of a chess player..."
Mike aka Crusty
ALL SERIOUSNESS ASIDE:
Dolphins create their own names
Scientists find evidence for bottlenose equivalents of ‘John’ and ‘Mary’
A bottlenose dolphin swims with a youngster. Scientists have found that members of the species refer to each other using calls that serve as names.
A high-pitched "wee-o-wee-o-wee-o-wee" whistle might not sound like much to you, but it's exactly how a dolphin might introduce itself.
Because sight is limited in the ocean, dolphins create individual "name" calls to communicate their whereabouts to friends and families.
But it's not as simple as just recognizing a voice, as with most animals. A new study reveals that the calls contain frequency changes that dolphins recognize.
Humans are one of the few species that use sound modulation instead of simple voice differences to identify individuals. For example, a person can recognize the name "John" whether it's being said by Gilbert Gottfried or James Earl Jones.
Scientists have long known that dolphins identify themselves with names, but the belief was that, like some monkeys, the animal's voice was the key ingredient of the call.
A team of researchers led by Vincent Janik of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland temporarily captured seven male and seven female bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota Bay in Florida. Janik and his crew recorded the name calls of each dolphin, and digitally removed the voice features of each call.
They then played the computerized calls and digital versions of other random calls through underwater speakers where the dolphins were held.
In nine of 14 cases, the dolphin would turn more often toward the speaker — an established technique for gauging a dolphin's interest — if it heard a whistle resembling the name of a close relative.
"Everydolphin has its own voice," Janik told LiveScience. "But we removed those features and showed that the animals are actually paying attention to the modulation and not the voice."
Naming game
A dolphin chooses its own name as an infant and uses it throughout its life.
"It seems like the animals hear what's around them, and then they make up their own whistle," Janik said. "They either develop something original ... or they base it on parts of the whistles around them."
Regardless of the method, the young dolphins want to make their call stand apart from the calls of their closest relatives. Communicating by sight is difficult underwater, so dolphins use these calls to let other dolphins know they're nearby. A dolphin will also call out its name if it's lost and distressed, hoping relatives will come to its aid.
Dolphins are some of the most talkative animals around, even though we don't know what they're saying.
"Their repertoire of calls probably numbers in the hundreds," Janik said. "Some of them are food calls, but for most of them we have no ideas what they're for."
The study is detailed this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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