Dolphins are intelligent beings. Amazing abilities of dolphins. Wound healing in dolphins

Scientists have done unexpected discovery Dolphins and humans are probably distant relatives. Perhaps they managed to find confirmation of the myths and ancient legends about dolphins. Through extensive research, experts have found that blood dolphin a (including other marine mammals) and man is very similar in composition. This news stunned everyone. But that's not all. Scientist Christopher Moore (McGovern Institute for Brain Research), stated that the blood of a dolphin not only transports oxygen and nutrients throughout the body as in humans, but still affects the process of thinking! In other words, blood actively regulates the information processing that nerve cells perform. If this theory is confirmed, then we can safely say that dolphins and humans think the same way.

In 1949, zoologists proved that all cetacean animals that live in the depths of the sea have a brain that is larger in absolute weight than that of humans. This discovery greatly surprised the American psychoanalyst John Lilly, who became famous for his work in psychiatry and neurophysiology. After such high-profile discoveries, he immersed himself in a more detailed study of dolphins for twelve years. After a large number conducted experiments, the scientist expressed a rather amazing theory that dolphins are people of the sea. Perhaps, intelligent humanoids live near us. In addition, in 1967 he published the well-known book The Mind of a Dolphin. Intelligence beyond man. John Lilly declared to the whole world that we have yet to part with the opinion that a reasonable person is the crown of creation.

Anthropologists also added colors to this hypothesis. They found that during the period of global cooling, the ancestors of people who lived off the coast indian ocean led a semi-aquatic life. They foraged for their food in shallow water. And most likely, over time, they moved deeper and deeper from the cold and icy land into the sea. Gradually, from a long swim under water, these people disappeared hairline, and the body gained "subcutaneous fat". They have learned to control their breathing underwater. After all, they needed to dive for edible algae and shellfish.

A million years ago, the ancestors of today's dolphins did just that. But over time, they left the land and forever went to sea ​​depths. This is proved by excavations and the very structure of the front fins in modern dolphins. It turns out that under the flippers of all representatives of cetaceans, brushes are hidden, which are very similar to a brush human hand.

Even Plato and Herodotus in their writings suggested that after Atlantis disappeared, some of the inhabitants turned into "water people." These people have created their underwater state on the remnants of a continent that has sunk into the sea. In ancient Indian writings, a certain people of the Danavas is mentioned, who lived under water. In various medieval books, there are also references to reservoirs in which strange creatures lived. They had both a human appearance and at the same time very similar to the underwater inhabitants.

Perhaps the first person to ignite public interest to the "intellectuals of the sea," as marine biologists like to call dolphins, was the American neuroscientist John Cunningham Lilly. He announced himself in the science of cetaceans with a whole cascade of amazing discoveries. One of Lilly's books, The Man and the Dolphin, was translated into Russian.

The neurophysiologist's addiction to dolphins was influenced by the size and weight of the brain of these animals: in an adult dolphin, the brain weighs 1700 grams, that is, 350 grams more than in humans! On this basis, John Lilly suspected our brothers in mind in dolphins and set about trying to test this crazy hypothesis.

Having deployed a sophisticated program of studying the mind and language of dolphins, the neurophysiologist soon began to receive the results he desired! According to him, once in his presence, one dolphin distinctly said: "Lilly!" However, the neurophysiologist was ahead of the psychologist Louis Herman from the University of Hawaii (USA), who taught young dolphins two artificial languages! One of them consisted of whistling sounds synthesized on a computer, and the other consisted of signs formed by gesticulation with fingers and hands. Each language contained 35 words, combined according to the rules of grammar into more than a thousand phrases!

Dolphin civilization?

Lilly became more and more convinced of the special position of dolphins in the animal kingdom. Moreover, the scientist gradually believed in the existence of another civilization next to us! Over millions of years of underwater evolution, she comprehended the secrets of the ocean and the laws of the universe, created a culture and a kind of science. All this gigantic array of information is stored in the vast memory of "living computers" and passed on from generation to generation - at first it was assumed that it was orally, and now, as it turned out, in writing!

Yes, apparently, our closest relatives - monkeys - are gradually moving away from us on the quick wits scale. Indeed, according to Professor A. Portman from the Zoological Institute in Basel (Switzerland), the dolphin should be ranked second in terms of intellectual level after the human, followed by the elephant, and only then the monkey. But the opinion is expressed that the dolphin in some ways even surpasses Homo sapiens!

Universal sonar

Doctor biological sciences Boris Fedorovich Sergeev, in his book Living Ocean Locators, reports on the unthinkable intensity of the work of the dolphin brain during acoustic sounding of the surrounding space. The sound emitters of an animal generate continuously 20-40 signals per second, and in special occasions- about 500 impulses! Thus, the dolphin's brain processes every second such an avalanche of various signals that even a modern computer could not handle. Sending clicks, squeaks, whistles and hoots in different directions, the dolphin catches their reflections from the encountered obstacles and creates a kind of mosaic of echo signals in its brain. It can be assumed that this mosaic reproduces the surrounding space with all the objects in it with such information richness that simply cannot be achieved by visual perception!

According to the above-mentioned John Lilly, he came close to establishing vocal contact with these animals. Studying the tape recordings that recorded all the conversations and sounds in the dolphinarium, the researcher drew attention to the explosive and pulsating series of signals. It was like laughing! Moreover, in the tape recordings made in the absence of people, some words that belonged to the operators and uttered by them during the working day slipped in a very compressed form! However, the process of teaching dolphins the human language did not go further. Thinking about the reasons for this, Lilly came up with a stunning insight: they got bored with people!

Nevertheless, another important step in this direction was made by Moscow bioacoustics V.I. Markov and V.M. Ostrovskaya. Moreover, their results can be considered simply sensational! But the fact is that human speech consists of three levels of complexity: sound, syllable and word. A combination of words can, in principle, express any thought. So. in dolphin language Lately counted six levels of difficulty! The main thing, according to experts, is that this the highest degree a peculiar signaling system reminiscent of the archaic languages ​​spoken by the Eskimos, the Iroquois and some tribes living in North America! The fundamental basis of speech among these peoples is something like a linguistic hieroglyph, which combines nouns, adjectives, and verbs. In a word, the equivalent of a whole expanded phrase! So it is with dolphins: the basic element is a long whistle, and in different groups signals, it differs in beginnings and ends, just as in human speech there are prefixes, suffixes and endings with an unchanged root! And finally, the most surprising thing is that in the dolphin signal sequences, mathematical patterns were found that are characteristic of human written texts! In other words, they show signs of a semantic hierarchy like "phrase - paragraph - paragraph - chapter"!

Last news

IN former USSR almost all dolphin research has been classified. The above-mentioned Moscow bioacoustician, Doctor of Biological Sciences Vladimir Markov, also spoke about this. According to him, back in the 80s of the last century, he and his colleagues studied the writing of dolphins. Scientists put tens of thousands of their signals on paper! And we realized that the dolphin's signal is something more in meaning and informational content than our lexical unit - the word. And the vocabulary of these signals is huge - about 7 thousand! A person, by the way, manages with a vocabulary of only 800-1000 lexical units! "In my opinion. - said V.I. Markov, - dolphins - sentient beings capable of receiving, processing and using information, the volume of which goes beyond their biological needs ... ". It is a pity that John Lilly did not live to see this significant recognition!

American dolphin researchers Jack Kassewitz and his wife Donna are now running the international Let's Talk to a Dolphin project. Enthusiasts hope to decipher the "hieroglyphs" seen in the cross section of the sound beams that animals use to "feel" their surroundings. According to project consultant Horace Dobbs, he has long suspected that the dolphin brain processes sound signals just like the human brain processes visual information. Now this has been proven. Thus, the communication system in dolphins may be based on visual images that are transmitted by sound.

Dolphins are the most intelligent mammals on the ground. The brain of a dolphin and are similar in structure. Despite numerous studies, they remain the most mysterious mammals on earth.

Studies of the extraordinary capabilities of marine life confirmed their intellectual abilities. Using MRI diagnostics, scientists found that the complexity of the brain structures in dolphins is not inferior to the human center, but, on the contrary, in comparison with humans, there are even an order of magnitude more convolutions and nerve cells.

The brain of a bottlenose dolphin has a weight of 1700 gr., only 350 gr. exceeding the weight of the central organ nervous system in an adult male. External difference only in form: in mammals it has the shape of a sphere, the human brain is slightly flattened. The associative area of ​​the cortex is absolutely identical with a person, thus confirming the presence of intelligence in marine life.

The parietal lobe in dolphins is comparable in size to the parietal and frontal lobes in humans. The visual part of the brain (occipital), in mammals is very large.

Despite excellent vision, and the ability to move their eyeballs in different directions, thereby covering a radius of 300 degrees, mammals use ultrasound for vision - directing it to various objects. Pushing off, the sound returns, thereby the dolphin determines the shape and distance to the object.

Unlike humans, dolphin brains can do without sleep, which is fatal to humans. The peculiarity of these creatures is the ability to turn off one half of the center, while maintaining all reactions. One part of the brain takes over all the functions when the other is in a state of sleep - this is tantamount to having two centers.

Dolphins, like humans, have the ability to reproduce sound. Mammals can accurately copy the various noises or trills of birds. Communication between relatives occurs through signals that are formed by the passage of air through the nasal passages.

Dolphin Vocabulary:

• Basic sound signals (about 60);
• Five levels of their different combination;
• 14 thousand different signals.

This is identical to the human vocabulary and if you translate the sound of mammals into words, it will look like a hieroglyph. Dolphins have a good memory and mental capabilities, which allows, like a person, to pass on experience to generations.

feature central office, in cetaceans is the presence of magnetic crystals that orient in a wide expanse of the ocean.

Who is smarter?

Numerous studies of the brain structures of cetaceans confirm their evolutionary development and the presence of a higher form of reason (logic). Australian scientists have attributed dolphins to the closest human relatives, based on DNA analysis.

Perhaps this became the basis for the hypothesis - all cetaceans are the distant ancestors of man and they were forced to leave the land for good reasons. The size of the hemispheres is explained by oxygen starvation and, as a result, an increase in the organ.

Scientists - ichthyologists have proven that the brain of mammals is capable of expressing feelings: jealousy, resentment, love. This indicates the presence of a long-term memory and a mind close to a person.

Certain individuals of dolphins perceive complex linguistic constructions and are capable of analyzing the situation. Their level of intelligence is similar to that of a preschool child.

The big brain in dolphins is not associated with huge intelligence - there are too few neurons. central authority marine life needed for orientation in space and thermoregulation. Based on this, mammals occupy an honorable second place in intellectual development after humans.

For decades, scientists have been trying to figure out exactly how the dolphin's brain works. Capable of learning, having their own social skills and clearly understanding the behavior of people, these mammals seem to have come from another planet - they are so different from representatives of the rest of the animal world.

Over the past fifty million years, dolphin brains have evolved to unprecedented proportions. One of the latest published studies, authored by marine biologist Lori Marino, claims that dolphins and whales have reverse-evolved from land to ocean depths. Here are a few facts that fully support these bold conclusions.

Dream
Sleep deprivation kills anyone Living being- as sure as a gunshot wound. Only twelve days without rest is enough for a highly organized brain to turn off the main functions. But dolphins have learned to deceive the system: these amazing mammals they know how to turn off, at will, half of the brain so that it can rest.

Language
Dolphins remain the only creatures in the world (other than humans, of course) that have their own language. They communicate using a complex combination of clicks and sounds. Moreover, the language of dolphins is complex enough to accurately coordinate the behavior of the entire flock. Researchers estimate the linguistic reserve of an ordinary dolphin at 8 thousand "words" - for an average person it is only 14 thousand, moreover, in ordinary life only about 1-2 thousand words are used.

Logical thinking
Scientists have found that dolphins have rudiments logical thinking. This is the highest form of intelligence development that no one expected to find in mammals. Dolphins were able to solve various difficult riddles, find answers to complex questions and even adjust their behavior depending on the new circumstances set by the person.

Dimensions
The brain of an adult dolphin weighs more than the human brain - 1700 grams and 1400, respectively. In addition, dolphins have twice as many convolutions in their cerebral cortex as we do.

self-awareness
The latest data obtained by scientists may indeed signal that dolphins have a serious social structure. They possess not only self-awareness (some other animals can boast of this), but also social consciousness, practiced in conjunction with emotional empathy.

Echolocation
The total number of nerve cells in a dolphin is higher than in humans. This is partly due to the ability of mammals to echolocation: they literally see with their ears. An acoustic lens located on the head focuses ultrasound, which the dolphin uses to "feel" underwater objects, determining their shape.

magnetic feeling
Another amazing property the dolphin's brain turned out to be able to feel magnetic poles. Dolphins and whales have special magnetic crystals in their brains that help these mammals navigate the expanses of the world's oceans. The same feature can also explain the reasons why the whales are thrown ashore: guided by the readings of their "GPS", they simply do not notice it.

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When the German physiologist M. Tiedemann saw the brain of a dolphin for the first time back in 1827, he was amazed. The brain of a dolphin turned out to be larger than that of a monkey and almost the same as that of a human.

Professor A. Portman from Switzerland conducted research on the mental abilities of animals and found out that according to the results of the test, a person came out on top - 215 points, a dolphin was on the second - 190 points, and an elephant was the third winner. The monkey took only fourth place.

When scientists compared the human and dolphin brains, it turned out that the average human brain weighs about 1.4 kg (Turgenev's largest is 2.12 kg). The brain of a dolphin pulls 1.7 kg. Moreover, the cortex has twice as many convolutions. Isn't this what explains the amazing quick wits and incredible quickness of thinking of the dolphin? He is able to assimilate the amount of knowledge 1.5 times more than you and I. In addition, dolphins have their own colloquial speech with which they can communicate with each other and transmit the necessary information.

Why does a dolphin have such a large and complex brain? Of course, not just to eat, swim smartly, produce offspring.

This question interested scientists and they tried to establish who was the ancestor of the dolphin. Remaining elements in the skeleton of animals confirm that they originated from some kind of terrestrial quadrupedal mammals. Blood tests suggested that cetaceans, which include dolphins, and ungulates are relatives. But what made the dolphin ancestor change his terrestrial existence to a water one 65 million years ago, and who, in fact, was he?

It can be assumed that the whole thing is some kind of cosmic cataclysms that touched the Earth and forced animals to seek salvation in the water. After all, it was 65 million years ago that dinosaurs suddenly disappeared from the Earth. Finally, what was the land in those days: tiny islands in the vast expanse of the oceans. It could happen that someone did not have enough space on this small land.

Who knows, maybe the forerunner of man and dolphin was the same creature: having picked up a stick from the ground, it went through a grandiose path of earthly evolution and became a man, and, returning to the sea, it became a dolphin.

Like it or not, it is difficult to say with accuracy. However, one thing is absolutely clear: if man is the crown of creation on Earth, then the dolphin is the crown of creation in the ocean, "the king of the expanses of the sea."

Dolphins give birth to babies in the water. At the time of childbirth, the female raises her tail high above the water, the dolphin is born in the air and has time to breathe before it falls into the water. For the first few hours, the baby dolphin swims like a float in an upright position, slightly moving its front flippers: it has accumulated a sufficient supply of fat in the womb, and its density is less than that of water. There is always a mother and one or two more females nearby.

The dolphin feeds on mother's milk for the first time. When sucking, the baby’s lips are replaced by a tongue rolled into a tube: he covers the mother’s nipple with it, and she splashes milk into his mouth. All this happens underwater: the respiratory canal is separated from the esophagus, and the dolphin can swallow food underwater without fear of choking. After 3 years, he becomes an adult. Dolphins live up to 30 years. Cubs are born once every 2 years.

Dolphins move easily and quickly in the water. With a sudden jump, he throws the body out of the water in order to take a breath. Their shiny bodies amaze with a perfectly streamlined shape, reminiscent of a drop or a torpedo. The muzzle is extended into a narrow beak, the nostrils are merged into one "blowhole", from which the animal can release a fountain of spray 1-1.5 m high.

An adult dolphin is capable of reaching speeds of over 50 km/h. This speed is facilitated not only by the streamlined shape of the body, but also special properties skin. The outer layer - about 1.5 mm - is extremely elastic. The inner layer with a thickness of about 4 mm consists of a dense fabric. What's interesting is that inner part the outer layer is permeated with many passages and tubes filled with a soft fatty substance. By the way, the artificial lining for submarines its quality resembles the skin of a dolphin.

Dolphins have complex audio signaling. They are able to create and perceive ultrasounds. Precise sonar makes it possible for them to detect objects the size of an acorn in water at a distance of up to 15 m. Thanks to echolocation, dolphins find food and avoid collisions with obstacles even in completely muddy water.

Examples

Once a passenger ship was wrecked. Several people survived. None of them believed that they could survive. And when they saw a flock of sharks approaching them, they said goodbye to each other. But suddenly a miracle happened. A flock of dolphins rushed from the open sea, fearlessly dispersing a flock of sharks. And she helped people stay afloat until help arrived.

An even more striking incident occurred with the fishermen in the same place in the Black Sea. A flock of dolphins surrounded the launch and swam nearby, making sounds and clearly trying to attract the attention of people. The dolphins circled around the ship until people realized that the animals were worried about something. Following them, they found a captured dolphin. Having fought off the flock, he got tangled in a fishing net. The cub was rescued and released.

The fate of the famous dolphin Tuffy, an honorary member of the American underwater expedition, is interesting. The dolphin worked as a postman and conductor, bringing appliances and tools. If one of the aquanauts swam too far into the sea and lost his bearings, Taffy always came to the rescue and led the lost one to the house on a nylon leash. After such a brilliant debut, Tuffy was accepted into service at one of the US missile ranges. He searched the sea for the electronic devices of spent rocket stages. All equipment was crammed with miniature ultrasonic transmitters. The dolphin was in a hurry to their "call signs".

The dolphin Polorus Jack, so nicknamed by English sailors, has been guiding ships through the dangerous strait in New Zealand for 25 years as a real pilot.

Not so long ago, an absolutely amazing incident occurred in the marine aquarium in Miami. Several dolphins caught in the ocean were brought here for training. Not far from the recruits were already trained dolphins. They did not see each other. And yet, a conversation immediately began between them. All night long strange sounds and noises were heard from the pool. The unthinkable happened in the morning. The new dolphins immediately began to perform all the tricks that people intended to teach them. It seems that their brothers, who have long lived in the pool, told them about this.

V. Avdeenko.

The distant ancestors of dolphins lived on land. Only about 70 million years ago they went to live in the ocean. Why? Because in difficult periods of history, only aquatic organisms can survive on Earth. The longer people study dolphins, the less improbable the hypothesis seems that these mammals created their own civilization, indistinguishable in complexity from ours.

Level mental development dolphins is very high. To what extent, the person has not yet been able to establish. Perhaps this view is in no way inferior Homo sapiens in terms of reasonableness. The dolphin brain surpassed the human brain both in weight and in the number of convolutions and nerve cells in the cortex.

Dolphins have their own communication system, which is in no way inferior to human language. The language of dolphins includes both gestures (turns of the head, tail, fins, various postures, jumps) and various sounds, which are sound and ultrasonic impulses.

Only whistles in the language of dolphins, the researchers counted 32 varieties. Each of them carries certain information - a greeting signal, the call of relatives, an expression of alarm, and so on. Interestingly, some native tribes canary islands and Mexico at a great distance also communicate with the help of a whistle.

By scanning the language of dolphins using the Zipf method, scientists have received indisputable evidence that it serves to transmit information, like human speech. The Zipf method allows you to determine whether sounds carry informational meaning. Its essence lies in determining the frequency of repetition of identical letters in speech. In the form of a mathematical graph, the speech of intelligent beings has the form of an inclined line, and random noises are located strictly horizontally. So, the speech of dolphins had the same slope coefficient on the graph as the language of people.

It was possible to isolate about 200 communication signs in the vocabulary of communication of these mammals. But their deciphering is slow and difficult. The sound communication of dolphins occurs in the range up to 300 kHz, while humans communicate with each other in the frequency band up to 20 kHz. Like humans, dolphins' speech has six levels of organization, from sound to context. But if people begin to understand each other only from the third level (word), then dolphins communicate even with the help of monosyllabic sounds.

There are many similarities between humans and dolphins. And this applies not only to the complexity of the organization of speech. Dolphins live as long as people, create families, love to communicate, grow up at the same age. Depending on the region of habitat, the language of dolphins differs slightly, which allows us to draw a parallel with national languages of people.

American scientists have found that each dolphin at birth receives a name from its relatives (a certain form of whistle lasting 0.9 seconds), which it responds to throughout its life. Dolphins refer to each other by name when communicating.

If the dolphin is alone in the pool, then it is silent. But as soon as another individual appears nearby, they begin to reproduce the richest set of sounds.

The study shows that approximately eight of the 67 species of Odontoceti (including dolphins) went through a stage of EQ increase approximately 15 million years ago, reaching coefficients of 4 and 5, although the reasons for this second evolutionary leap remain completely unexplained (there is only one such case of "explosive" development of "intelligence" among large animals, known to scientists today: over five million years of human history, EQ increased from approximately 2.5 to 7). Wherein " mental capacity"The rest of the" dolphin tribe "for some reason, on the contrary, decreased.