Dolphins are people of the sea. Dolphins: the second intelligent creatures on earth! Do dolphins have intelligence

Already in Ancient Greece to these marine predators treated with great respect. But are they as smart as we think? Justin Gregg conducts an investigation.

As soon as the American neurophysiologist John Lilly (John Lilly) opened the skull of a dolphin, a convex pink mass was exposed. He knew immediately what he had done important discovery. The brain of an animal was huge: even more than a human. It was 1955. After studying the brains of five euthanized bottlenose dolphins, Lilly came to the conclusion that these fish-like aquatic mammals surely have intelligence. Possibly superior to human intelligence.

When Lilly made his discovery, the relationship between intelligence and brain size seemed simple: the larger the brain, the smarter the animal. We, with our huge brains stuffed into our swollen skulls, by this logic, naturally, turned out to be the most smart look. Therefore, the dolphins must have been smart as well. But research since then has shown that the dolphin's "claim" for the most high intelligence(except for a person) is not so justified. Crows, octopuses, and even insects show intelligence comparable to that of a dolphin, even though they don't even have nearly as much gray matter.

So are dolphins as smart as we think?

CE test

Encephalization Coefficient (EC) is a measure of relative brain size calculated as the ratio of actual brain size to average predicted brain size for a mammal given size. According to some measurements, the largest EC (7) is in humans, since our brain is 7 times larger than expected. Dolphins are in second place, for example, in large-toothed dolphins, the EC is approximately 5.
However, when it comes to comparing EC with the intelligent behavior of animals, the results are mixed. Large ECs correlate with the ability to adapt to a new environment or change their behavior, but not with the ability to use tools or imitate. The matter is further complicated by the growing last years criticism of the very principle of calculating the FE. Depending on the data entered into the model, humans may have a normal brain-to-body ratio, while gorillas and orangutans have an incredible big bodies compared to a standard brain.

Gray matter

Having a large brain - or a large EC - does not in itself guarantee that an animal will be intelligent. But not only the size of the brain intrigued Lilly. Inside the dolphin's skull, he found an outer layer of brain tissue that, much like the human brain, was twisted like crumpled paper stuffed into a thimble.
The outer layer of the mammalian brain, called the cerebral cortex, in humans is involved in complex cognitive processes, including our ability to speak, as well as self-awareness. It turns out that a dolphin's cerebral cortex is larger than a human's. What could this mean?

In many species that have passed tests of self-awareness (such as the mirror test), a relatively large portion of the cerebral cortex is located in front. It is this frontal cortex that appears to be responsible for the ability of chimpanzees, gorillas, and elephants to recognize themselves in a mirror. Dolphins also successfully passed this test. But here's the catch: they don't have a frontal cortex. Their enlarged cerebral cortex is squeezed into the area on the sides of the skull. The front of the brain remains strangely sunken. And since magpies, which also recognize themselves in the mirror, have no cortex at all, we have to scratch our heads in an attempt to figure out which parts of the brain in dolphins and magpies are responsible for self-awareness. Perhaps dolphins, like magpies, don't use their cerebral cortex to recognize themselves in a mirror. What exactly the dolphin's cerebral cortex does and why it is so large remains a mystery.

Name that whistle

This is not the only mystery surrounding the dolphin's intelligence. For many years, the debate about the mismatch of the brain of dolphins with their behavior was so fierce that a Canadian specialist in marine mammals Lance Barrett-Lennard was forced to say, "If a dolphin's brain were the size of a walnut, it would have no effect on their complex and highly social life."

Lilly could oppose the remark about walnut. But with the idea that dolphins are socially complex creatures, he would agree. While conducting rather unpleasant invasive experiments on the brains of living dolphins, he noticed that they often call each other (using whistles) and seek comfort from each other. He considered this evidence for the theory that dolphins are social animals and that their communication system can be as complex as human language.

After 15 years, there is evidence that Lilly was not very far from the truth. During experiments, when it comes to understanding the meaning of signs and their combinations in sentences, dolphins cope with tasks almost the same as great apes. Establish two-way communication with dolphins as well as with higher primates, has not been successful so far. But the ability of dolphins to understand signs in laboratory studies is amazing.

However, Lilly's suggestion that the dolphin's communication system is as complex as ours is probably not true. In fairness, it must be said that scientists generally understand practically nothing about how dolphins communicate. But they managed to find out that dolphins have a feature that is not inherent in the rest of the animal world (with the exception of humans). Among some species of dolphins, each member of the species has its own special whistle, which he uses throughout his life and which serves as his "name".

We know that dolphins can remember the whistles of their relatives and playmates, they even remember whistles that have not been heard for 20 years. Dolphins respond when they hear their own personal whistles from others, according to new research, suggesting that dolphins call each other by name from time to time.

Lilly, of course, couldn't know that. But he could very well have witnessed just such behavior during his experiments half a century ago.

How a dolphin learns

If dolphins try to attract the attention of their relatives by calling them by name, then they are to some extent aware that they are conscious. Unlike most great apes, dolphins seem to immediately understand human pointing gestures. This suggests that they are able to correlate mental states, such as looking or pointing, with the people producing those pointing gestures. How an animal that does not have hands is able to understand the pointing gestures of a person is simply a mystery. And although there is no evidence that dolphins are fully capable of understanding the thoughts and beliefs of others (some call this a “model of consciousness”), they, wanting to draw people's attention to an object, point to it with their heads.

Some awareness of their own thought processes (and the thought processes of other creatures), apparently, allows dolphins to resolve difficult problems as it happened in the laboratory. In the wild, a female Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin has been caught removing the skeleton of a cuttlefish to make it easier to eat. This is a long process that requires planning.

When hunting, no less ingenuity can manifest itself. Wild bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay in Australia use sea ​​sponges to drive the fish out of the shelter - a skill that has been passed down from generation to generation. Many dolphin populations learn hunting techniques from their peers. Bottlenose dolphins in South Carolina (USA) gather at the shore exposed at low tide to trap fish, while killer whales in Antarctica form groups to create waves and wash seals off the ice.

Such "social learning" is an integral part of the theory of animal culture, defined as knowledge that is passed from animal to animal. This is probably the best explanation for how young killer whales learn the dialect of their family.
One hypothesis for why dolphins have such large brains may exonerate Lilly's original ideas: it suggests that dolphins have a kind of social intelligence that makes it possible for them to solve problems, culture, and self-awareness. Many species of dolphins live in complex societies with intricate and ever-changing alliances, the relationship between groups of males in Shark Bay is like the plot of a soap opera. Living in a society riddled with political intrigue requires considerable mental ability, because you have to remember who owes you and who you can rely on. The leading theory is that dolphins developed such large brains because they needed additional "cognitive muscles" to remember all these complex social connections. This is the so-called “social brain” hypothesis.

brainy creatures

This may explain why other animals with complex social lives also have large brains (chimpanzees, ravens, and humans, for example). But do not completely write off the owners of a small brain with a small EC yet. Many examples complex behavior, which we see in dolphins, are also observed in species that are not included in complex social groups. A border collie named Chaser knows more than 1,000 signs for objects, a "vocabulary" the size of which would make dolphins and great apes blush when tested under similar conditions. Octopuses use coconut shells to protect themselves from predators. Goats are able to follow human pointing gestures. Fish are able to acquire a range of skills through communication with each other, including defense against predators and foraging. And ants exhibit a behavior called "tandem running," which is probably the best example of non-human learning.

Lars Chittka, an insect behavior scientist, is a strong believer in the idea that small-brained insects are smarter than we think. He asks: “If these insects with such a small brain can do this, then who needs a big brain?”

The more we learn about neuroscience, the more we realize that the relationship between brain size and intelligence is tenuous at best. Dolphins no doubt exhibit a rich range of intellectual characteristics. But what exactly this overgrown nut in the dolphin skull does is now even more of a mystery than before.

Justin Gregg - dolphin communication researcher and author Are Dolphins Really Smart? (Are Dolphins Really Smart)

Material prepared
Ekaterina Sivkova

Look At Me deconstructs a popular misconception every week and tries to figure out why it is so attractive to most of the people who defend it, and, in the end, why it is not true. In the new issue - that dolphins have a reputation as the most intelligent mammals is completely unfounded.

Statement:

Dolphins are the most intelligent mammals on the planet after humans. The dolphin's brain is by no means inferior to the human brain in terms of structural complexity: it even has more convolutions and nerve endings.

The attention of scientists around the world to the extraordinary intelligence of dolphins was attracted primarily by the size of their brain. Brain adult weighs about 1,700 grams, while the brain of an average person is 1,400 grams. In 1961, psychoanalyst and neuroscientist John C. Lilly, in his book Man and Dolphin: Adventures of a New Scientific Frontier, stated that dolphins have their own language with 60 basic signals and 5 levels of their combination, and in 10–20 years a person will be able to master this language and establish communication. In addition, dolphins stand out from other intelligent animals in having self-awareness (they are able to recognize themselves in the mirror) and emotional empathy (willingness to help other individuals). In India, for example, dolphins are officially recognized as individuals, and dolphinariums are banned throughout the country because they violate the dolphins' right to freedom.

Chris Parsons

zoologist

“There is no doubt that certain individuals of dolphins have the ability to comprehend sign language and symbolic signs, as well as recognize linguistic constructions (mainly written language), if they are accompanied by an action or a demonstration of an object. They are able to perceive complex linguistic constructs such as syntax, analyze the behavior of others, "cheat" for their own benefit, and recognize their own reflection in a mirror - which some toddlers are not capable of. In fact, their level of intelligence and awareness is at the level of a preschool child.”

Why is it not:

The size of a dolphin's brain has nothing to do with its intelligence: Dolphins need big brains to keep warm and remember complex coastlines.

Justin Gregg, author Are Dolphins Really Smart? The mammal behind the myth, is convinced that the language of dolphins is extremely limited and therefore does not prove that they are intellectually gifted. No one denies that dolphins have a complex signaling system that ensures the transfer of information between individuals, but it can only be called a language conditionally. And the emotional sympathy of dolphins is extremely exaggerated: they are able to attack a person and kill cubs of other species (for example, porpoises). According to Jay Mortan, an expert in animal acoustic communication, dolphins need large brains for nothing more than keeping their heads warm and navigating.

website- For quite a long time, experts have studied the language of dolphins and have received truly amazing results. As is known, sound signals arise in the nasal canal of dolphins at the moment air passes through it.

It was possible to establish that animals use sixty basic signals and five levels of their combination. Dolphins are able to create a "dictionary" of 1012 words! It is unlikely that dolphins use so many "words", but the volume of their active "dictionary" is impressive - about 14 thousand signals. For comparison: the same number of words is the average human vocabulary. And in Everyday life people get by with 800-1000 words.

Dolphin communication is expressed in sound impulses and ultrasound. Dolphins make a wide variety of sounds: whistling, chirping, buzzing, squeaking, squealing, smacking, clicking, grinding, clapping, roaring, screaming, creaking, etc. The most expressive is the whistle, the variety of species of which includes several dozen. Each of them means a certain phrase (alarm, pain, call, greeting, warning, etc.) American scientists came to the conclusion that each dolphin in the flock has its own name, and the individual responds to it when relatives turn to the dolphin. No other animal has been found to have this ability.

Dolphin Intelligence

The dolphin brain is similar in weight to the human brain. Size doesn't matter in this case. Swiss scientists who conducted research on the abilities of animals found that in terms of intelligence, dolphins rank second after humans. Elephants were third, and monkeys took only fourth place. Not inferior in weight to the brain of an adult, the brain of a dolphin, at the same time, has a more complex structure of cerebral convolutions.

Many scientists these days conduct various experiments with dolphins and come to unexpected conclusions.

In particular, the theory that dolphins, unlike other representatives of the animal world, use "their own language" - not only for communication at the level of survival instinct, but also for the accumulation and assimilation of significant amounts of information. The question is why they need it - if they do not have "intelligent life" in the human understanding. A lot of research is being done in this direction.

An important aspect is that dolphins “see” with their ears. By emitting ultrasound, they calculate the object, thus obtaining some kind of visual image. The hearing of these mammals is hundreds of times sharper than that of a human. He is able to hear the sounds of fellows for hundreds and sometimes thousands of kilometers.

Their dolphin ear sensitivity level is located in the range of 10 Hz - 196 kHz. Perhaps the low-frequency limit is even lower. None Living being on Earth does not have such a wide frequency range.

With the so-called acoustic sounding of space, dolphins generate about 20-40 signals per second (up to 500 in extreme situations). That is, every second there is information processing comparable to the power of the most complex computers developed by man (Boris. F. Sergeev “Live ocean locators”).

It is assumed that from this kaleidoscope of information, the surrounding space and all the objects in it are reproduced, which, in their information content, is not comparable with our usual visual perception.

It is worth considering that a person receives 90 percent of information through the processing of a visual signal. So dolphins get it due to auditory and echolocation. Moreover, at a level at which a person cannot even create technical devices.

The "language" of dolphins

The speech of dolphins - all sorts of “unreasonable” sounds in the human eye, is already now, again on the basis of scientific experiments, is considered in terms of complexity like any human language.

Russian scientists Markov and Ostrovskaya, studying the speech of dolphins, came to the conclusion that it surpasses the human in terms of complexity.

Modern languages have the following structure: sound, syllable and word. of which speech is made. When analyzing the sounds made by dolphins, 6 levels of complexity were identified, which has a structure similar to ancient, forgotten languages. Such languages ​​are based on something like linguistic hieroglyphs. When behind one sound designation (sound, syllable) - in such languages, the equivalent of a semantic phrase in our understanding is laid down. In the case of dolphins, this is a definite whistle.

In the speech of dolphins, mathematical patterns were also found that are characteristic of written texts according to the hierarchy of information arrangement: phrase, paragraph, paragraph, chapter.

Learnability

What are the intellectual abilities of dolphins? First of all, it is worth noting fast learning marine life. Dolphins sometimes learn to follow commands even faster than dogs. It is enough for a dolphin to show the trick 2-3 times, and he will easily repeat it. In addition, dolphins show Creative skills. So, the animal is not only able to complete the task of the trainer, but also to do some more tricks in the process. Surprisingly, this property of the dolphin brain: it never sleeps. The right and left hemispheres of the brain rest alternately. After all, a dolphin must always be on the alert: avoid predators and periodically rise to the surface for breathing.

Dolphins have truly amazing abilities. The famous American neurophysiologist John Lilly, one of the pioneers who studied brain physiology at the University of Pennsylvania, called dolphins a "parallel civilization".

John Lill 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!

Dolphin therapy

It is actively used in modern medicine, the following facts are confirmed by official studies.

The fact that the patient is in an altered state of consciousness during the session is confirmed by electroencephalographic data (measurements are usually taken before the session and immediately after it). The rhythms of the human brain slow down significantly, the dominant EEG frequency decreases, and the electrical activity of both hemispheres of the brain is synchronized. This state is typical for meditation, autogenic immersion, hypnotic trance, holotropic breathing. In addition, psychoimmunological studies have shown that during sessions of dolphin therapy, the production of endorphins increases significantly. Endorphins help to harmonize nervous system and set it up for an active and positive worldview.

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 of 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 audio signals in the same way that 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.