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The only citation I think anyone is going to find for this is in the National Enquirer. I recommend it be deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.57.60.171 ( talk) 04:34, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
"The cetacean neocortex, on the other hand, has only five layers, and there is little differentiation of outer layers according to function. The neocortex of the cetacean brain has a highly developed layer I and VI"
Now is it 5 or 6? :) Layer VI (=6) can only be present if there are (at least) 6 of them. Matt Kovacs ( talk) 18:11, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
FYI, the article on Treeshrews says, as follows, "Treeshrews have a higher brain to body mass ratio than humans, though this is not uncommon for animals weighing less than a kilogram." If this is true, this necessarily means that dolphins do not have the highest brain-body ratio for non-humans (at issue in the "Brain size" section). However, the treeshrew article was not cited. Perhaps it would be better to say that dolphins have the highest brain-body ratio for an animal of a certain mass (perhaps, over one kilogram?). Of course, again, the issue of citation. Philolexica ( talk) 01:55, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Are dolphins intentionally causing their own death, (via mass strandings as in recent and not so recent news or otherwise)?
How can this behaviour be interpreted? Are they aware that cessation of life would mean cessation of physical (or existential) pain? Does it imply a consciousness level comparable to ours?
The shallow wedge of water at a beach acts as an acoustic absorber. It's likely that to sonar - odontocetes' primary sense - the beach looks like open water, since it doesn't provide the sound reflection that most barriers would. Psychologically, it's probably akin to a thirsty man pursuing a mirage deeper into the desert. Warren Dew 18:18, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Ok, if one want to REALLY believe that humans share this globe with another "intelligent" species, the cetaceans, then I suppose any evidence to the contrary is going to be explained away. Your example of humans living near volcanoes is an odd one. Volcano eruptions are often thousands of years apart. For example, Vesuvius hasn't exploded for two thousand years. And in many cases, the people don't have much choice where they live. I made a comment in the "Learning and Memory" section further down which adumbrated a design for an experiment to see if dolphins can "talk" in any way comparable to humans. What surprises me when I see people talking in a language I cannot understand, say a Chinese newsreader on our local ethnic TV channel, is the sheer pace and variety of sound. It is exactly OPPOSITE to the notion of mantras and singing, which repeat the same phrasing over and over. Human communication involves the transfer of knowledge by means of having a vocabulary of thousands of words, many of them abstract nouns, and a grammar to put those words together. The result sounds like no other animal, and must terrify wild animals when they see and hear it. I have wondered about what animals make of, say, two men sitting on a verandah and having a chat. They might think "These two are not fighting, not hunting, not mating, they don't seem to be warning of danger, or trying to signal their presence - why are they making than infernal racket that sounds nothing like song?" Of course, those humans are swapping information, and this means that repetition is minimised, not the reverse as it is with whale songs. That's just common sense really. If I ever see an animal warn another that a particular human is dangerous when that human is NOT THERE, then I will concede that some animals can communicate like humans do. In the meantime, I would just note that there is really NO evidence to show that cetaceans are more intelligent than goats or elephants or reindeer. They might play more actively, and make friends with people more readily, but this does not mean that they are specially endowed with brains. If that were true, the friendly village idiot would be brighter than the po-faced professor at a college. Myles325a ( talk) 00:21, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
First let me say I am not an expert on cetacean intelligence. However, I do think I have something to add to the conversation: AmandaEP stated that "We have yet to crack the whales' codes." I must seriously question the idea that there is a code to break here, and that within this code, assuming it even exists, is anything remotely close to language as complex as human language. To Amanda, it seems there is a foregone conclusion that there is in fact a code to break. I find it hard to believe, with the extensive observation and study of some species of cetaceans, that if there is some code to crack, that it has not been. My guess would be that the communication of these species is no more complex than some of the more intelligent primates, and quite possibly far less complex. Additionally, we are not talking about a single blind person walking into a rock. We are instead talking about a group of animals, which as a group continue to beach themselves despite others in the group doing so. This is different than a situation where a person gets trampled by a crowd - the crowd harms the individual, not some outside threat. If there was an outside threat, the crowd was escaping it. This would only be similar if, while trying to escape being beached, the dolphins all swam back in the other direction, accidentally killing an individual in the process. This also doesn't seem to be a stampede like situation, unless there was another threat that was chasing the group of dolphins towards the shore. Instead this seems to be a species, so inept at communicating, that they cannot communicate individually, as each one finds itself in a situation where it is beached to the group that if the group continues they too will suffer a similar fate. This would be like a bunch of blind people, in a group, walking, and each falling off of the cliff, and despite the screams and warnings from those who fall or start to fall, the entire group continues to walk towards the precipice. Nlgambrel ( talk) 02:40, 7 August 2013 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by Nlgambrel ( talk • contribs) 02:09, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
"they can breathe above water while sleeping." If you know anything about how this fact was discovered, please add it to the article. (Or is this just one of those urban legends like " ostriches put their head in the sand" ?) -- DavidCary 04:11, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
http://whale.wheelock.edu/whalenet-stuff/sleeppage/
mentions
"While sleeping, the bottlenose dolphin shuts down only half of its brain, along with the opposite eye. The other half of the brain ... watch[es] for predators, obstacles and ... signals when to rise to the surface for a fresh breath of air. After approximately two hours, the animal will reverse this process, resting the active side of the brain and awaking the rested half. This pattern is often called cat-napping."
This article states that bottlenose have 42.5% of brain size when born whereas humans have 25%...however, what this really means is dolphins behavior is more instinct than learned. For example, the highly intelligent elephant has a brain ratio when born of 35%...which really surpasses dolphins, doesn't it? And as for the E.Q....only the Bottlenose has an EQ that high...Orca, considered to be the most intelligent have a very low EQ. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.234.140.44 ( talk) 23:37, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
"However, though [Dolphins learning to perform their own novel and original tricks] impressed researchers at the time, experiments by Neuringer(1992) and others have shown that other animals like pigeons and rats can likewise be trained for variability of response, which given time can result in apparently original behaviour. Whether there is a clear case for dolphins showing real creativity in this experiment is therefore questionable."
I hate to nit-pick, but this really needs to be elaborated on. It seems what is being said is:
"Dolphins have shown themselves to be capable of original behavior. Other animals like rats and pigeons have shown themselves to be capable of original behavior as well. Therefore, it is questionable if dolphins are capable of original behavior."
This doesn't make a lot of sense. I realize that the reader is probably supposed to assume that rats and pigeons are not capable of "real creativity", but without explaining this, the paragraph in question doesn't flow logically. Secondarily, why is there the assumption that rats and pigeons are not capable of "real creativity"? Why would correlations in creative ability between dolphins and rats indicate that dolphins are not creative, as opposed to indicating that rats are creative?
EDIT: I think what they are saying is they are unsure of their own observations. They might be saying they have observed the same (or similar) behavior in rats and pidgeons, and are unsureof the indicated intelligence. Just a thought.
I know that this is an encyclopedic entry and not an essay, and by no means am I attempting to make a case for rat or pigeon creativity (although people who've owned pet rats and trained pigeons might be inclined to make such a case). But a statement which essentially says "dolphins appeared to be creative, until pigeons and rats were shown to also be creative, so now it's somewhat doubtful if dolphins are creative" just doesn't make any logical sense. It's as if the article were to say "Tom is smart. Dick once seemed to be almost as smart as Tom. Now we know Harry also seems almost as smart as Tom. Therefore, it is doubtful if Dick is nearly as smart as Tom."
This will leave many readers asking: "How the heck do you draw that conclusion?" It needs to be explained why Harry appearing to be smart makes Dick less intelligent. -- Corvun 02:46, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Is the claim that dolphins can harness 'ocean energy' through cavitation-induced cold fusion akin to the claim that there is an invisible green man standing in the corner of the room? I can't see him, but I have it on excellent authority that he is there.
I'm moving the to-do list from the "Communication" paragraph to here, since it doesn't really belong in the article, and I've filled up some of that paragraph anyway.
Should be a sub section of communication abilities
Also, this article Title is Cetacean intelligence, but it only discusses dolphins.
I've moved this to the talk page until someone can explain this better. As it stands, it's a horrible logical fallacy.
"However, though this impressed researchers at the time, experiments by Neuringer(1992) and others have shown that other animals like pigeons and rats can likewise be trained for variability of response, which given time can result in apparently original behaviour. Whether there is a clear case for dolphins showing real creativity in this experiment is therefore questionable. Arguably the quality of the dolphins' response was far superior, but further research is required in this area to test this."
Now, in case my previous explanation was not clear enough, I'll walk y'all through this step-by-step:
Okay, all's good. So not only are dolphins capable of creativity, but so are rats and pigeons. Got it.
Huh? This is the part that throws me, and leaves me asking, "How the heck do you come to that conclusion?" It's completely illucid.
To be specific, these are the points that need to be explained:
If no one has an answer to this, then I suggest the phrasing of the paragraph in question be altered to point out these logical errors before its reintroduction into the article. -- Corvun 14:58, July 19, 2005 (UTC)
This article seems to be full of non sequiturs along the lines of the above example. It goes out its way to cast doubt on brain mass as co-relating to intelligence and in the same breath claims "if dolphins were equipped with brains notably smaller than those of humans, it would make a powerful case against their having intelligence." Which is it? Marskell 09:14, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
Removed this section until these points can be expanded. I know all pages are works in progress but notes-to-self and others and talking points shouldn't be on the main page.
Learning and memory
Should be a section on learning skills. Scientific tests relevant to:
Have any studies been done on dolphin cognition? I mean, show a dolphin a square, transmit "square" in ultrasound, then show a circle, transmit "square" in ultrasound, & see what the dolphin responds? (Yeh, it's thinking, "What's human for, 'You're stupid'?") Trekphiler 00:05, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Neutral point of view is questionable on comments on the US Navy. Ideally someone should research public knowledge on this topic, to see if it is directly relevant to "cetacean intelligence".
I suspect that the Navy primarily conducts sensory and physiological research, in addition to training for deployment-related purposes such as mine tagging. However none of these topics are relevant to "intelligence".
The existing text explictly uses terms such as "allegedly" and "unsubstantiated". Therefore the specific comments covered by these descriptors are hearsay, and not encyclopedic with NPOV.
Recommend deleting all of these references, unless information obviously relevant to cetacean intelligence can be found, and written with NPOV. Santaduck 08:24, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
Continuing with the discussion on NPOV/US Navy above, the entire section resides in a section called Research Difficulties'. IMHO this entire section is rather inaccurate, or perhaps misleading through fault of not being specific.
In full, the text reads: Research difficulties
Knowledge about the capabilities of the dolphin brain is limited because of major research difficulties. Research of cetacean behavior in the wild is among the most expensive and difficult to carry out, owing to the nature of the environment they inhabit. There have therefore been relatively few scientific studies of dolphins in the wild, and most direct observations are anecdotal. Studies based on captive dolphins have limits because it is not clear how natural their behaviour is under those conditions.
In addition, the United States Navy has allegedly carried out a substantial amount of research which has not been put in the public domain. The U.S. Navy does acknowledge that its dolphin program has trained dolphins to search and tag mines and warn of divers approaching installations. Rumours circulate about less benign uses, but these are unsubstantiated.
Some comments:
Will be deleting the entry for now. Santaduck 07:28, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Began preliminary cleanup in communication area. Some gross errors were here, such as the length of echolocative pulses are a 'fraction of a millisecond' in length, which is incorrect by perhaps 3 orders of magnitude. Also removed significant text which implied that the general consensus is that echolocation is the primary communicative modality-- In fact this notion seems to be peppered throughout this article (see also refs by Jerison elsewhere in this artice) with undue encyclopedic emphasis given to what is explicitly noted to be speculation. Also removed speculation on Lilly-esque notions that there might be a full-blown human-equiavelent language "out there", although I didn't have time to check the article (with Russian coauthors), so I simply moved the reference to the overall article's reference section. Retained the information on the studies of Xitco and Herman for now, although these refs had initially been tagged onto the end of comments on echolocation, comments that have now been removed-- however the acoustic spotlight, as well as visually-mediated pointing are definitely communicative issues. I also reordered the article so that the click/whistle distinction begins the communication section, and added a few mentions of specific species, e.g. orca, bottlenosed. I retained earlier rough notes on sig whistles, but these need significant cleanup and expansion, as well as mentioning critique from (academic-source) skeptics of the sig whistle hypothesis.
All in all, this section is still unsuitable. I spent perhaps 10 min here, but the visual communication mode is really undeveloped, and information on well-researched species such as spinners, white-sided, spotted, orca, beluga, etc. should receive more attention.
Entire article outside of communication also requires huge expansion and cleanup, especially the comparative cognition area. The references and external links should also be re-evaluated and completely redone, to reflect academic rather than popular sources.
URL from author K. LeVasseur removed from External Links section, despite added note that the article was written in a "scientific manner," which served as a flag that NPOV or encyclopedic value might actually be an issue. Article has little direct academic relevance to the topic of "cetacean intelligence", and the author is most well known as an anti-captivity activist rather than a cetacean researcher. Details of his arrest and conviction for which he is most well known in the late 70s are available. I Googled one example here: [3] . A news article on his continued activism and employment in the transit industry is available here: [4]. Note: have not systematically gone through all other external links entries for encyclopedic reference and NPOV. These external references should be cleaned up in general, and categorized, as someone has already done for "self-awareness" references.
I am K. LeVasseur (aka Cetaman) and I am concerned that there is no signature on this threat (above and beyond the points made in this thread). Problems may be due to my lack of familiarity with this protocol. Cetaman ( talk) 22:36, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
Who ever made the upper most post in -More NPOV- has one week to notice that I am taking exception to the above comments because of Wiki Rules and in the interest of discussion. Next weekend, I will delete this entire thread because your comments are unscientific and opinionated and you will be challenged in your future edits. Cetaman ( talk) 05:48, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Unscientific and opinionated seems to be exactly what you are being accused of, with information to back that up. Look, I am not exactly for keeping dolphins in captivity, especially when it comes to entertainment purposes. However, I am glad that you didn't succeed in getting the comment deleted, as it just doesn't seem fair that the person who is being called into question academically could delete a comment of such a nature, especially one only visible through talk. Furthermore, the information that was included in the so called "scientific" article that LeVasseur wrote surely has actual academic sources for it to actually be of any real value here, and perhaps rather than citing an article written by a school bus driver/activist, it would be far wiser to use the sources LeVasseur cited in the allegedly "scientific" article, if it was in fact based on science and not opinion or conjecture of a non-neutral, non-scientific nature. If indeed the article had real scientific information, surely it must be available elsewhere. First and for most, wikipedia should be a reliable source, not a battleground between viewpoints or a place that holds neutrality above all else, meaning non-accurate information would need to be included to keep neutrality. Sometimes there is correct and incorrect information. If you do in fact, have published, peer-reviewed, scientific information to include K. LeVasseur a.k.a. Ceteman, I suggest you reference the actual research, rather than your own article, and if somebody else cited you, I would suggest you fix that by citing your sources, rather than attempt to keep your article as a reference. It would increase the integrity of the article to do so, and if there are no sources to cite, I suggest you find some other wheel to grind your axe upon, or at least find some legitimate sources of information to reference. Having read this wikipedia entry as an attempt to learn more about the topic, I really don't like the idea that a source is editing the article or talk, nor do I like that the source is an activist rather than an academic. Perhaps I would feel better knowing that an it was an academic source was contributing and editing an entry/talk, but it seems to me to be quite improper for a non-academic source to be doing so. Nlgambrel ( talk) 03:09, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Also, how is it a threat to say that a non-academic article shouldn't be used? Or if it is to be used, how is it wrong to point out that the person may not be coming from an academic or neutral point of view? You really come across as trying to abuse the system in order to ensure that non-academic sources remain. Nlgambrel ( talk) 03:09, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Hello, I am a little skeptical of the statement, "It is notable that second-order alliances in bottlenose dolphins are the most hierarchically complex social structure observed in the animal kingdom, excluding the human species." To me it appears that there are many animals with arguably more complex social structures than bottlenose dolphin secound order alliances. What about ant and bees and termite. Ants have queens, multiple types of worker, soldiers, young, this seems more complex on some levels to me. Or chimpanzees, they can form similarly sized complex alliances. I have added 'arguably one of'. Without references the original statement is too strong. Nicolharper 18:52, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
I just saw an article, [5], which talks about how dolphins actually refer to each other by names. Does somebody want to say more about that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by PhoenixSeraph ( talk • contribs) 20:43, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I've removed a recently-added section ("Use of names") about this, which read like the following:
I'm not sure how this is different from signature whistles, which are already talked about in the article. If there is a difference, please re-add and reference. LjL 21:10, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Absolute or relative to brain/body size proportion?
Paul Manger of Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand has recently published a very widely publicised article on this subject (peer reviewed), in the Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (An examination of cetacean brain structure with a novel hypothesis correlating thermogenesis to the evolution of a big brain). Basically, through a study of cetacean brain structure, he's been able to determine that the main component is "glia", which is used primarily to produce heat and (in this case) maintain the brain's temperature in a cold water environment. The main thrust of his study is that the brain size of water dwelling warm blooded creatures is not so much determined by intelligence, but simple insulation. OzoneO 14:54, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
This probably does not change one way or another the aspect of it being a sign of intelligence or not, however, it is worth noting that the vast majority of cells in the human brain are also technically glia, as glial cells make up much of the framework for the shape of a brain as well as perform almost all of the support and maintenance of the neurons themselves, and DO have limited signal firing capacity with neurotransmitters(however, this should not be overestimated, limited is the operative word here, they do not have very broad capabilities of firing, just some minor ones(mostly weak, short-distance fires, as far as we know)) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.84.80.104 ( talk) 05:47, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
A bit of research would have shown that it does change, quite substantially, the idea of size as an aspect of intelligence. What Prof. Manger found was that “Dolphins have a superabundance of glia and very few neurons… The dolphin’s brain is not made for information processing it is designed to counter the thermal challenges of being a mammal in water,”. I'm surprised there hasn't been more discussion on this. Unless his (peer reviewed) research has been shown to be faulty, this deserves at least a mention on the main page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.215.3.187 ( talk) 15:51, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
I completely agree with the idea that this should be included. It is peer-reviewed, and seemingly accurate information, that should be included. It has implications, regardless of the idea of size, as it describes the density of neurons in the brain, which does have implications for intelligence. When I read the article, I was surprised not to see this referenced, especially when an image comparing the size of the brain is used in the entry, additionally, due to the discussion of "spindle neurons" I feel that this has a relevant place in the article. Nlgambrel ( talk) 03:17, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Dolphin tend to do badly in problem solving test which is better indication of intelligence. You might notice that almost all the evidences presented as indication of dolphin intelligence is to do with its social aspect (such as recognising oneself in the mirror). Sure, they are very social and friendly to human. This shouldn't be confused with intelligence. I notice the same cultural bias in the West where dogs are considered intelligent simply because they can do tricks and are good pet. This kind of elementary errors shouldn't be included in encyclopedia. You might be suprised to learn that Octpus, for example, is extremly intelligent. Vapour
I don't mind that some people believe that intelligence="social skill" as opposed to intelligence="Abstract Problem Solving Skill". I do mind it when ideologue who hold the former view deliberately censor verified content supporting the later view. Vapour
Given the language and physical barriers between dolphins and humans there is a limit to how accurately we can test their problem solving ability. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abuonfiglio ( talk • contribs) 17:07, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree with the above. It's silly to expect that we are yet in a position to even design 'abstract' tests for a dolphin. If you gave a human a test that was designed by an underwater species, then 90% of the race would likely fail the test.
Does this, then, mean that humans are incapable of abstract thinking? Of course not! It just means that humans aren't familiar with the environment. The same situation applies to dolphins, we'd have to specifically tailor a problem to their environment, and we can't really successfully do that without more study. We're not at the point where we can do that, yet.
So basing intelligence on abstract problem solving at this point for this reason is folly and incredibly unscientific. 77.107.172.208 ( talk) 08:10, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Is there any simple comparison of there intelligence that the ordinary person can understand. Muntuwandi 05:37, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
If "looking soulfully up at Mumsy", as you put it in your ever-so-cute, lop-eared way, actually works for "pooch" and "pooch" knows it will, then his is clearly the more intelligent approach--for him. Doesn't say much for your own "problem-solving [capability]", though, does it? TheScotch ( talk) 10:48, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
If you look at the references offered up by both sides of this inteligence debate [ |Not inteligent] and [ | are inteligent] it would appear that the Not inteligent case is weak if it is just based on this reference. This is because the reference just has a speculation as to a reason as why the brains of the dophin is big without having to envoke intelegences. Whereas the are inteligent refernce refers to data measuring intelegence and quotes a journal article. Herman, L.M. (2002). Exploring the cognitive world of the bottlenosed dolphin. In M. Bekoff, C. Allen & G. Burghardt (Eds.), The cognitive animal: Empirical and theoretical perspectives on animal cognition (pp. 275–283). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Ttguy 06:12, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I have added an article regarding dolphin intelligence and elephants, who are said to be equals.
The duskydolphin
04:33, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
Elephants have a brain size up to 5.4 kg compared to human's 1.5 kg brain. This image seems to be wildly inaccurate which shows an elephant brain only slightly larger than mine. I don't know about the other brains shown here, but I'm removing it from this article (the only one it appears in) until it's checked over. — Pengo 04:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
A scientific article was recently published on the cognition of cetaceans which greatly bolsters the theory that cetaceans are intelligent creatures. Much information can be added to this article. It can be found here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.67.214.104 ( talk • contribs) 07:14, 9 July 2007
Why is the IQ of the individuals believing in near-human levels of cetacean intelligence necessary in the article? Referring to the passage "...although it is believed by some humans possessing IQ's of 200 that dolphins and other cetaceans have an intelligence potential that is at least equal to humans of average intelligence (IQ 100)." Eleblanc ( talk) 21:58, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Article States : "However, many scientists now tend to rank dolphins about the level of elephants in "intelligence" tests and say that dolphins haven't shown any unusual talent with problem solving compared with the other animals classed with very high intelligence[10]."
Source States : "But others say that in our enthusiasm to anthropomorphize dolphins, we give them powers they just don't possess. A closer look suggests that much of the dolphin's large brain is taken up with echolocation and handling acoustical information -- processes at which they excel. But dolphins tend to rank at about the level of elephants in "intelligence" tests and haven't shown any unusual talent at problem solving."
It is from a site that is giving a lot of evidence to the contrary, they were simply reconizing the a different point of view. I have no clue where the "Many Scientists" comes from. Does anyone a different source (perhaps one of the many scientists?) - StarDolph ( talk) 19:22, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
With ref to Michele Bini’s comment above, dolphins are NOT the only animals that engage in self-destructive behaviour when panic-stricken or in extreme pain. All the ‘higher mammals’ including horses, cats, dogs and apes can present with human-like symptoms of severe stress. Dogs which lose a much-loved master can show every sign of ‘nervous breakdown’ and clinical depression, both behaviorally and physically. Other mammals will go on rampages, chew their own fur and eat their own excrement, refuse food and howl incessantly. Apes will throw themselves against their cages. In a series of notorious but well-conducted experiments of the 1960s, researchers tormented dogs to the point where they not only had ‘breakdowns’ but showed every sign of having become permanently insane through terror and pain. These were ‘higher’ animals. I have no idea whether you can make a butterfly mad, or drive a snail to distraction. Myles325a ( talk) 04:36, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I've heard before that dolphins in particular have "signature whistles" - sort of a name for themselves. I don't have the opportunity (nor the eloquence to put it in words for the article) to do more research on this, but I think it might prove to be an interesting addition in regards to self-awareness. 74.211.30.145 ( talk) 02:23, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
this is so fascinating. i am almost convinced that the bottlenose is smarter than homo sapiens. dolphins have a very, very complex language they teach their young, which we cannot understand. they have gangs, wars, gang rapes, politics, games, sports similar to soccer with underwater objects, creative courtship and flirting, respect for the most intelligent of the pack, sympathy for humans, awareness that humans must also breathe, sympathy for whales, they can do logic and play tic tac toe like games with humans, creative solutions for problems, they commit suicide when left no alternative, my god is there anything preventing us from thinking they are as smart as us now? 75.1.48.21 ( talk) 23:02, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
I find that this article seems to read more as a thesis than anything else, this is due to it presenting an individual view coupled with inaccuracies, unmet citation requirements, NPOV, weasel words and so on. It seems to forego the merits of an encyclopaedic article in order to convince the reader of a singular outcome and it feels very anecdotal because of that.
Therefore, at least to me, I don't think it stands up to scrutiny when considered as an encyclopaedic article. It might make a decent Scientific paper but without the references and proper research to back it up, it's nothing more than a thesis, and I don't think Wikipedia is the place for a thesis.
I'd move for a deletion of this article, as the amount of factual information therein is not enough to allow a reader to draw their own conclusions or do their own research. If not a deletion then the article needs to be cut down and then cleaned up, adding only elements which meet encyclopaedic criteria.
94.193.119.106 ( talk) 04:43, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
I mentioned before that I believe that this is thesis-like, after some research I found that this is grounds for a clean-up. I believe that it needs to be noted in a way that people can see before reading the article.
I will explain my rationale for each template message.
Cite Sources: There are many instances in the article where citations are not present, yet they should be in order for this to qualify as an article.
Weasel Words: I'm not a seasoned editor, so I won't go tampering with the article, but there is an instance of Weasel Words that should be removed.
Misleading: The difference between IQ and EQ is noteworthy, but the article writer does his best to lead the reader to believe that EQ is a completely fair and Scientifically factual measure of intelligence, it is not. This along with the missing citations leaves the article feeling somewhat intellectually dishonest.
Essay: I believe the article reads like an essay or thesis rather than an article, there isn't much there that's truly encyclopaedic, there are too many implications, not enough citations, and conclusions drawn by the article writer. I believe that these elements give the article an unencyclopaedic feel.
I feel that these are completely relevant with the current state of the article and I would protest their removal, I'd like the opinion of one of Wikipedia's main editors on this as I feel that there are issues with this article that are just being brushed over. 93.97.227.130 ( talk) 05:54, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
If they're so smart, why don't they just jump over the tuna net? Readers of this article want to know. Chrisrus ( talk) 18:06, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
The table is just randomly there, without any indication of what the scores mean, where they came from, etc. There should be more information, or it should be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.189.134.229 ( talk) 06:09, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
It's done. I have pasted the table below for us to discuss. Reading the accompanying I suspect that it is possible that it came from MacPhail's book. However, this books dates from 1982 and a lot has been discussed on whale intelligence since. Adding this table even it is from MacPhail would give undue weight to a single opinion. Someone should research this issue and rewrite the article. There is a book on this issue "Unveiling the whale" by Arne Kalland (2009) that takes a critical approach to the issue of whale intelligence and refers to a lot of the discourse. I think that would be a good start. Fedor ( talk) 08:19, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Species | Score % |
---|---|
Langur | 98 |
Mink | 95 |
Ferret | 90 |
Bottlenose dolphin | 87 |
Rhesus monkey | 86 |
Cat | 70 |
Rat | 60 |
Squirrel | 60 |
Those interested in aspects of Cetacean intelligence might be rewarded with a look at this rather out-of-the way story. I do not believe that whales, dolphins etc possess intelligence markedly different from other herd mammals but the story of Old Tom will open some eyes and raise some eyebrows. Here, a wild Orca made what could be called a contract with a whaling community, and helped these humans capture and kill whales in return for being given the tongue and lips of the prey. This was the “Law of the Tongue” and for DECADES, these whalers had it very easy as Old Tom, with other whales alongside him, herded migratory Baleen whales into Twofold Bay (in Australia), and waited for the carcasses to be strung out for them to take their reward—the tongue and lips—after which the carcasses would be processed in the usual way. Old Tom died in 1930 but the museum in the town of Twofold Bay displays his skeleton, and he is still a revered legend there.
The Old Tom page does not provide much detail on this fascinating story, which, were it not well-documented, would be regarded as typically new age poppycock. The page gives little detail of other aspects of the story. Apparently, Old Tom was betrayed by some unbelievably greedy whalers who tried to take a Baleen whale from his grip and in so doing broke his teeth, leading eventually to his death. After Old Tom’s death, the whales in his group went elsewhere, and it is thought that their tame disposition towards humans led to whalers targeting them as easy catches.
As dolphins rather than whales are regarded as being the more intelligent of the cetaceans I wonder if there is any record of them (or other wild mammals) entering effectively into win-win contracts with their human neighbours.
It is typical of the apathy of Australians to most elements of their history that this astonishing story is given a bare couple of paragraphs in WP, and no one has yet had anything at all to add to the talk page there. You can compare this to the page concerning the trivial Exploding Whale story, which is given about 5 times the coverage, many more photos and notes and where the Talk Page is full, with two archives so far (!) Myles325a ( talk) 06:38, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
OP myles325a back live. It's like the Phantom, who is believed by the "jungle people" to be 400 years old. We white folk know that it is a succession of Phantoms, the legacy being handed down father to son. And so it is for old Tom. There was Grandfather Old Tom (the oldest of them all) and then his descendants took over the family business. Nevertheless, he is still known as "The Ghost who Breaches". Myles325a ( talk) 03:54, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
There should be a picture of cetacean vocal organs and samples of their languge available. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.86.157.69 ( talk) 22:40, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
Are dolphins good with math? If so, how do they view numbers and mathematics? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.86.157.69 ( talk) 22:44, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
If dolphins are 'intelligent' could they have complex belief systems, maybe some hard for humans to understand? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.86.157.69 ( talk) 22:46, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
This whole article is in need of a lot of work, especially in appropriate sourcing, but the Self Awareness section is particularly written like original research. The first source is a non-academic article about a 2006 mirror test study with elephants, ironically one that is co-authored by Diana Reiss, one of the leading researchers in cetacean cognition and author of several published dolphin mirror test studies not cited here. Many of the sources for the article seem to focus on elephant and human intelligence, often mentioning cetaceans only by comparison. The External Links section may not be normally considered encyclopedic, but at present it's a far better list of reliable and relevant sources for this topic. I removed this unsourced, unattributed sentence from the Self Awareness section:
...which is nearly copy-pasted from this article: "Research suggests dolphins capable of self-recognition" which can be found in External Links but not in References at all. On top of that the wording suggested a 1996 study was done "as a response to this criticism", which apparently consists of this quote from 2001. I also removed the false and POV aspersion that since the published, peer-reviewed study hasn't been repeated its scientific validity is questionable. One of the persistent 'themes' of this article seems to be the scientific consensus that elephant intelligence is quite substantial while that of cetaceans is dubious and debatable. This is pretty clear when comparing the equivalent section Elephant cognition: Self awareness, which is devoid of 'debate' like the rest of that article. It's worth noting that the same single 2006 study co-authored by Diana Reiss is the source there also, while her decades of peer-reviewed dolphin cognition studies (not to mention her book "Dolphin in The Mirror") are not mentioned and/or criticized as problematic here. Apparently only her cetacean mirror tests are 'susceptible to the Clever Hans effect'. Some might contend I'm simply arguing a POV in the other direction by downplaying ample scientific evidence for elephant intelligence; however it then seems odd that Reiss doesn't mention her cited elephant mirror study, or even elephants at all during this 2012 lecture: Thinking dolphin: Diana Reiss at TEDx, in which she lists animals who exhibit signs of self awareness. I believe the preponderance of elephant related content and references at least should be reviewed for being WP:UNDUE. AveVeritas ( talk) 21:54, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
I suspect the phrase "behavioral mimicry (inter- and intra-specific)" should contain species instead of specific. 16:49, 24 April 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.114.129.226 ( talk)
The last paragraph of that section contains the following sentence:
"The dolphin's greater dependence on sound processing is evident in the structure of its brain: its neural area devoted to visual imaging is only about one-tenth that of the human brain, while the area devoted to acoustical imaging is about 10 times as large."
The dolphin's acoustical-imaging area is ten times as large as what? Ten times as large as the dolphin's visual-imaging area, i.e. about the same size as the visual area of humans? Ten times as large as the acoustical-imaging area of humans? Ten times as large as the human brain itself? VictoriaWordNerd ( talk) 00:48, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
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-- Otr500 ( talk) 03:08, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
Hello, I created the article Shelling (fishing) but I wonder if it should go elsewhere. Fishing strategies ? Etc. Yug (talk) 16:24, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
The first paragraph of the 'Brain structure' section is about elephant brains and echidna brains. Would it not be better for the section to start with information about cetacean brain structure, and only then move on to dealing with inter-species comparisons.
Guyal of Sfere ( talk) 20:39, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
Cetaceans are not considered to have REM sleep as the modern consensus go.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8665646/ 81.207.186.222 ( talk) 09:48, 15 July 2022 (UTC)