P. froenatus: The Bridled Dolphin. Atlantic and Indian Oceans; about 6 feet.
P. malayanus: East Indies; more than 6 feet.
P. coeruleoalbus: South America, near mouth of River Plate; about 4 feet.
P. euphrosyne: Atlantic Ocean to South Africa; about 8 feet.
Genus Tursiops
T. truncatus: The Bottle-Nosed Dolphin. Has a short well-defined snout 2 or 3 inches long. There is a prominent fin in the middle of the back. Reaches a length of 11 to 12 feet. Has a very wide range. Commonest along the Atlantic coast of America from Maine to Florida. Found in Bay of Biscay, in the Mediterranean Sea, and in New Zealand waters.
T. abusalam: Red Sea; 6 feet.
T. catalania: Indian and Australian seas.
Genus Steno
S. rostratus: The Rough-Toothed Dolphin. Long-beaked, with roughened or furrowed teeth. Atlantic and Indian Oceans; about 8 feet.
Genus Orcaella
O. brevirostris: Irrawaddy River Dolphin. From Bay of Bengal, Vizagapatam, Singapore, and Siam (i.e., S.E. Asia).
Genus Lissodelphis or Tursio
Lissodelphis: The Right Whale Dolphin. All oceans.
Genus Grampus
G. griseus: Risso’s Dolphin. North Atlantic, Mediterranean, New Zealand, and Cape of Good Hope; 12 to 13 feet.
Genus Cephalorhynchus
These are the Southern, mostly cold-water dolphins.
C. heavisidei: Heaviside’s Dolphin. Cape of Good Hope; about 4 feet.
C. hectori: Hector’s Dolphin. New Zealand; about 6 feet.
C. albiventris: White-Bellied Dolphin. A very rare form, found off the coast of South America; about 4 feet 6 inches.
C. commersonii: Commerson’s Dolphin; also known as the Piebald Porpoise or Le Jacobite. Southern oceans; up to 5¼ feet.
Genus Lagenorhynchus
Characterized by great number of vertebrae (80 to 90), great length of transverse and vertical bony processes from vertebrae, moderately pointed high back fin having concave posterior border; the beak is short.
L. acutus: The White-Sided Dolphin. North Atlantic; about 9 feet.
L. australis: Peale’s Porpoise. Cape Horn, Chile, Patagonia, Falkland Islands; over 7 feet.
L. albirostris: The White-Beaked Dolphin. North Atlantic; 9 to 10 feet.
L. cruciger: South Pacific; 5 to 6 feet.
L. fitzroyi: Fitzroy’s Dolphin. Southern end of South America; 5 feet 4 inches.
L. obscurus: Dusky Dolphin. South Africa, New Zealand, Falkland Islands; 7 feet.
Genus Sotalia
Concentrated in the tropical seas or rivers of South America, Africa, India, and the Far East.
S. pallida: Buffeo blanco. Upper Amazon; 5 feet 6 inches.
S. fluviatalis: Buffeo negro. Upper Amazon; 3 feet 7 inches.
S. tucuxi: Upper Amazon.
S. guianensis: N. E. coast of South America.
S. teuszii: Noteworthy as being the one Cetacean believed to feed exclusively on vegetable matter. Kamerun River.
S. gadamu: Vizagapatam; averages 7 feet; snout 6 inches.
S. lentigiosa: Vizagapatam.
S. plumbea: Malabar coast of India; about 8 feet; very long snout.
S. borneensis: Gulf of Siam to Sarawak in Borneo.
S. sinesis: Chinese White Dolphin.
The Fresh Water Dolphins.
Genus Platanista
P. gangetica: The Susu or Gangetic Dolphin; about 8 feet; snout and beak drawn into long forceps-like beak, 7 or 8 inches long; confined to River Ganges and River Indus. It is almost blind.
Genus Inia
I. geoffrensis: Amazonian Dolphin or Boutu. Upper Amazon; 7 feet; long beak.
Genus Pontoporia
P. blainvillei: La Plata Dolphin. Estuary of Rio de la Plata; about 5 feet.
Genus Lipotes
L. vexillifer: Chinese River Dolphin. Ting Ling Lake, 600 miles up the Yang-tse River; 7 feet 6 inches; slightly upcurved jaws.
The Porpoise
The small beakless Delphinidae, which have a triangular dorsal fin and spade-shaped teeth, black above and white below; travels in large schools. The word “porpoise” is derived from the French porc-poisson, “pig-fish.” Never larger than 6 feet.
Genus Phocaena
P. phocaena: The Common Porpoise. Chiefly North Atlantic and North Pacific; never larger than 6 feet.
P. spinipinnis: Burmeister’s Porpoise. Rare. La Plata round Horn to Peru.
P. dalli: Dall’s Harbor Porpoise. Very rare. Alaska; less than 5 feet.
P. truei: True’s Porpoise. Japan; less than 5 feet.
P. dioprica: River Plate to South Georgia.
Genus Neomeris
N. phocaenoides: Finless Black Porpoise. Cape of Good Hope to Japan.
Genus Lissodelphis
L. peronii: New Zealand and Tasmania; about 6 feet.
L. brealis: North Pacific; about 8 feet.
The Right Whale Dolphins
The Whales with Teeth
The toothed whales are big dolphins, and are on the average much smaller than the Whalebone or Baleen toothless Whales.
Family Physeteridae
Subfamily Physeterinae
Genus Physeter
P. catodon: The Sperm Whale or Cachalot. All oceans. Male may reach 60 feet, the female usually half the length of the male. This is the whale that has suffered the relentless persecution of whalers, always a coveted prize on account of its spermaceti-permeated blubber, and its excretory ambergris. The most dangerous of whales.
Subfamily Kogiinae
Genus Kogia
K. breviceps: The Pigmy or Lesser Sperm Whale. Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Antarctic oceans; about 10 feet.
Family Ziphiidae
Genus: Hyperoödon rostratus: The Bottle-Nose Whale. North Atlantic, Mediterranean, South Pacific, and Antarctic; 20 to 30 feet.
Genus: Mesoplodon: “The Cow Fish;” Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans.
Genus: Ziphius: The Two-Toothed Whale. All oceans.
Genus: Tasmacetus: South Pacific.
Genus: Berardius: Pacific.
Family Monodontidae or Delphinapteridae
Subfamily Delphinapterinae
Genus: Monodon monocerus: Narwhal or Sea Unicorn. Arctic seas south of the ice-field. The male is characterized by an immense tusk, sometimes 9 feet long, projecting like a spear from the left side of the bluntly-rounded muzzle. The tusk is spirally grooved, and is the source of the horn of the unicorn of heraldry. Mottled in color, and about 18 feet long.
Genus: Delphinapterus leucas: The White Whale or Beluga. Resembles the Narwhal in size, shape, and habitat, but the tusk is absent.
Family Delphinidae
Genus Globiocephala
G. melas: Pilot Whale or Black-Fish or Ca’ing Whale. Temperate or tropical seas. Rounded head with dorsal fin. Takes its name from the fact that one whale or pilot leads the way of the sometimes huge schools; about 25 feet.
Genus Orcinus
O. orca: Killer Whale or Grampus. All seas. With a high dorsal fin and black and white coloring, aggressively bold and carnivorous, with singular cunning and intelligence. Fourteen seals and thirteen porpoises have been found in the stomach of a male measuring 21 feet. The male is usually about 30 feet in length.
Genus Pseudorca
P. crassidens: The False Killer Whale or Lesser Killer Whale. All seas.
FOOTNOTES
REFERENCES
- Aelian. On the Characteristics of Animals. Bk. VI, 15.
- Aesop. Fables. “The Monkey and the Dolphin.”
- Alpers, Antony. Dolphins: the Myth and the Mammal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.
- Anderson, John. Anatomical and Zoological Researches: Comprising an Account of the Zoological Results of the Two Expeditions to Western Yunnan. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1878.
- Apollodorus. The Library. III, 5, 3.
- Apostolides, Nicholas. La Pêche en Grèce. Athens, 1907.
- Aristotle. History of Animals. Bk. I, 5; II, 1, 13, 15; III, 1, 7, 20; IV, 8-10; V, 5; VI, 12; VIII, 2, 13; IX, 48.
- Biedermann, Paul. Der Delphin in der dichtenden und bildenden Phantasie der Griechen und Roemer. Halle, 1881.
- Cook, Arthur B. Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion. Cambridge, Eng.: The University Press, 1914, vol. 1, p. 662.
- Douglas, Norman. Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology. London: Chapman and Hall, 1928, p. 161.
- Euhemerus. Sacred History.
- Fairholme, J. K. E. “The Blacks of Moreton Bay, and the Porpoises,” Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, XXIV (1856), 353-354.
- Goodwin, George G. “Porpoise—Friend of Man?” Natural History, LVI (1947), 337.
- The Greek Anthology.
- Herodotos. History. Clio I, 23-24.
- Hill, Ralph N. Window in the Sea. New York: Rinehart, 1956.
- Kellogg, Winthrop N. Porpoises and Sonar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.
- Klement, Carl. Arion. Vienna, 1898.
- Lamb, F. Bruce. “The Fisherman’s Porpoise,” Natural History, LXIII (1954), 231-232.
- Llano, George A. Airmen Against the Sea. Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama; Arctic, Desert, Tropic Information Center [1955 or 1956], p. 74.
- Longman, Heber. “New Records of Cetacea,” Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, VIII (1926), 266-278.
- Longus, Cornificius. De Etymis Deorum.
- Lucian. Marine Dialogues. 8.
- Lycophron. Alexandra.
- Nonnus Panopolitanus. Dionysiaca. VI, 265-266.
- Norman, John R., and Fraser, F. C. Giant Fishes, Whales, and Dolphins. London: Putnam, 1937.
- Oppian. Halieutica. I, 649-654, 1089; V, 422, 519f.
- Ovid. Metamorphoses. III, 1, 202.
- Pliny the Elder. Natural History. IX, 8, 24-28.
- Pliny the Younger. Letters. IX, 23.
- Plutarch. On the Cleverness of Animals.
- Porphyry. De Abstinentia. III, 16.
- Rabinovitch, Melitta. Der Delphin in Sage und Mythos der Griechen. Dornach: Hybernia-Verlag, 1947.
- “Saved by a Porpoise,” Natural History, LVIII (1949), 385-386.
- Schmidt, Bernhard. Das Volksleben der Neugriechen. Leipzig, 1871.
- Servius. Commentarii in Vergilii Aeneidos. III, 332.
- Stebbins, Eunice B. The Dolphin in the Literature and Art of Greece and Rome. Menasha, Wisconsin: Banta Publishing Co., 1929.
- Usener, Hermann. Die Sintfluthsagen. Bonn: F. Cohen, 1899.
- Xenophon. Anabasis. V, 4, 28.
Modern Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises, as Challenges to Our Intelligence
By JOHN C. LILLY
The intelligence of whales has been the subject of speculation by writers since Ancient Greece.[1][2] The discovery of the large brains of the Cetacea in the eighteenth century led to inevitable comparisons of these brains to those of the humans and of the lower primates. The winds of scholarly opinions concerning the whales have anciently blown strongly for high intelligence but during later centuries shifted strongly against high intelligence. At the time of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) the dolphin, for example, was held in high esteem, and many stories of the apparently great abilities of these animals were current.[2] By the time of Plinius Secundus (A.D. 23-79) the beginning of a note of skepticism was introduced. Plinius said, “I should be ashamed to tell the story were it not that it has been written about by ... others.”[1]
In the middle ages the strong influence of religious philosophy on thinking placed Man in a completely separate compartment from all other living creatures, and the accurate anatomy of the whales was neglected. This point is illustrated by Figure 1, published in the 1500’s in Historia Animalium by Konrad Gesner. This was apparently a baleen whale. It has two tubes which apparently symbolize the double blowhole of the Mystacocetae. There is no modern whale known that has such tubes sticking out of the top of his head. There is a huge eye above the angle of the jaw. All whales have the eye at or near the posterior angle of the jaw. The eye is very much smaller than the one shown here. A print published in 1598 of the anatomy of these animals is shown in Figure 2. The drawing of the male organ is accurate (apparently it was measured with a walking stick), but the eye is too large and is misplaced.
These pictures illustrate very well man’s most common relationship to the whale, which has continued to the present day. For commercial reasons man continues to exploit these creatures’ bodies.
It was not until the anatomical work of Vesalius and others that the biological similarities and differences of man and other mammals were pointed out. It was at this time that the investigation of man’s large and complex brain began.
All through these periods intelligence and the biological brain factors seemed to be completely separated in the minds of the scholars. At the times of the Greeks and the Romans there was little, if any, link made between brain and mind. Scholars attributed man’s special achievements to other factors than excellence of brain structure and its use.
After the discovery of man’s complicated and complex brain and the clinical correlation between brain injury and effects on man’s performance, the brain and mental factors began to be related to one another. As descriptions of man’s brain became more and more exact and clinical correlations increased sufficiently in numbers, new investigations on the relationships between brain size and intelligence in Homo sapiens were started. The early work is summarized by Donaldson.[3]
In the late 1700’s and the early 1800’s the expansion of the whaling industry offered many opportunities for examination of these interesting mammals. Figures 3 and 4 are dramatic examples of the state of the industry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
One of the earliest drawings of the complex brain of one of the cetacea is that of Gottfried Reinhold Trediramus in 1818 (Fig. 5). This is an anterior view of the brain of the common porpoise Phocaena phocaena. This is one of the earliest pictures showing the complexity of the fissuration and the large numbers of gyri and sulci.
By the year 1843 the size of the brain of whales was being related to the total size of the body. The very large brains of the large whales were reduced in importance by considering their weight in a ratio to the weight of the total body. This type of reasoning was culminated with a long series of quantitative measures published by Eugène Dubois (Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, Ser. 4, VIII [1897], 337-376).
Descriptions from those of Hunter and Tyson onwards agree that, in absolute size, the brains are as large and larger than those of man. All were agreed that the smaller whales, i.e., the dolphins and porpoises, have very large brains with relation to their body size. It was argued, therefore, with respect to the dolphin, “this creature is of more than ordinary wit and capacity.” (Robert Hamilton, The Natural History of the Ordinary Cetacea or Whales, p. 66, in Sir William Jardine, The Naturalist’s Library, volume 7, Edinburgh, 1843.)
Tiedemann’s drawings of the brain of Delphinus delphis and of Delphinus phocaena were published by H. G. L. Reichenbach in his Anatomia Mammalium in 1845. The four drawings are shown in Figure 6. These drawings show the improved awareness of the complexities of these large brains in regard to cerebral cortex, the cerebellum, and the cranial nerves. Correlations between the structure of this brain and the behavior of the animal possessing it, were (and are) woefully lacking. The only behavioral accounts were those of whalers hunting these animals. Hunters tend to concentrate on the offensive and defensive maneuvers of the animal, and can give useful information for other kinds of evaluation of the animal’s behavior and presumed intelligence.
In 1787 John Hunter, writing in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (LXXVII, 423-424), said the following: “The size of the Brain differs much in different genera of this tribe, and likewise in the proportion it bears to the bulk of the animal. In the Porpoise, I believe, it [the proportion] is largest, and perhaps in that respect comes nearest to the human....
“The brain is composed of cortical and medullary substances, very distinctly marked; the cortical being, in colour, like the tubular substance of a kidney; the medullary, very white. These substances are nearly in the same proportion as in the human brain.... The thalami themselves are large; the corpora striata small; the crura of the fornix are continued along the windings of the ventricles, much as in the human subject.”
Flatau and Jacobsohn in 1899 wrote, “the large brain of the Porpoise is one of the smallest in the Cetacean Order in which the organ attains to a much greater absolute size than any other.”
In 1902 G. Elliot Smith wrote of the brain of a species of dolphin called “Delphinus tursio” (which may be the modern Tursiops truncatus): “This brain is larger and correspondingly richer in sulci than that of the porpoise: but the structure of the two organs is essentially the same.” His drawings are shown in Figures 7 and 8. He said further, “the brains of the Beluga and all the dolphins closely resemble that of the porpoise.”
Smith summarizes the discussion of the huge size of the whale’s brain. “The apparently extraordinary dimensions of the whale’s brain cannot therefore be considered unusual phenomena, because this enormous extent of the cerebral cortex to receive and ‘store’ impressions of such vast sensory surfaces becomes a condition of survival of the animal.
“The marvelous complexity of the surface of the cerebrum is the direct result of its great size. In order, apparently, that the cerebral cortex may be efficiently nourished and at the same time be spared to as great a degree as possible the risk of vascular disturbances [such as would be produced by large vessels passing into it], its thickness does not appreciably increase in large animals. [He then quotes Dubois’ figures showing that the whale’s cortex is the same thickness as that of the human.] Such being the case, it naturally results that the increased bulk of cortex in large animals can only be packed by becoming thrown into increasing number of folds, separated by corresponding large number of sulci.”[4]
In regard to communication between individual whales, Scammon in 1874 wrote the following: “It is said that the Cachalots [Sperm Whales] are endowed with the faculty of communicating with each other in times of danger, when miles ... distant. If this be true, the mode of communication rests instinctively within their own contracted brains.”[5] Let us not forget that Scammon was talking about the mammal with the largest known brain on this planet. Instinct as the sole cause of communication with a brain this size seems rather improbable. This brain is not any longer considered “contracted.” Both of these statements illustrate an authoritative view of that time. If one peruses the paper by Tokuzo Kojima, “On the Brain of the Sperm Whale” (in the Scientific Reports of the Whales Research Institute, Tokyo, VI, 1951, 49-72), one can obtain a modern clear view of this brain. The largest one that he obtained (from a 49-foot sperm whale) was 9,200 grams. The average weight of the sixteen brains presented in his paper is 7,800 grams for average body lengths of 50 feet. (The brain weight per foot of body length varied from 118 to 187 grams per foot, averaging 157; man’s ratio averages about 250 grams per foot.)
In the literature of the time of Scammon, the scholars failed to give us new information about the behavior of cetacea. There seems to have been a distinctly ambivalent attitude towards these animals which is continued today. This point of view can be summarized as follows: the whale is a very large animal with a brain larger than that of man. This brain is the result of the huge growth of its body. All of this large brain is needed to control a large body. Because these tasks are so demanding, there is not enough brain substance left for a high degree of intelligence to develop. Thus the large brain cannot give the degree of intellectual capability that man has.
As an example of man’s attitudes to cetaceans, consider the case of the U. S. Fisheries Bureau Economic Circular No. 38, of November 6, 1918, by Lewis Radcliffe, entitled “Whales and Porpoises as Food.” Roy Chapman Andrews is quoted as saying that hump-backed whale meat is the best of the larger cetaceans but that porpoise and dolphin meat is even better eating than that of the larger whale. The composition of the whale meat is given as 30% protein, 6% fat, and less than 2% ash. From a hump-back whale one obtains six tons of meat, from a Sei Whale, five tons, and from a Finback, eight tons. Directions are given to remove the connective tissue between the blubber and the muscle to avoid the oily taste. For those who are interested, the paper includes twenty-two whale meat recipes and ten porpoise meat recipes.
It can well be imagined, if we ever do communicate with whales, dolphins, or porpoises, the kind of reception that this sort of literature will receive from the cetaceans.
The limited point of view of the whales as “dumb beasts” neglects the adaptations that have taken place in non-mammalian forms with very much smaller brains but with comparable bulk of body. The 60-foot whale shark, a plankton eater, and like the rest of the sharks a water-breather, has a bulk of body comparable to that of the larger whales. It has a large brain cavity but a very small brain in a small part of this large cavity. (It is very difficult to find the weight of these brains to compare with that of the cetacea and other mammals.) The problem of brain weight versus body weight versus intelligence is most clearly expressed by Gerhardt von Bonin in his paper in the Journal of General Psychology (1937).[6] He gives a very extensive table for mammals, their brain weight, their body weight, and the values of 2 parameters for their specification. He then states, “it is clear from all that has been said above that the figures given here are nothing but a description of facts, a description which, in the mathematical sense of the term, is the ‘best’ one. It does not pretend to make any enunciation about the relation of intelligence and brain weight. For that purpose we need a much broader psychological basis than we have at present.
“Former attempts to analyze the relations between body weight and brain weight suffer from three deficits: (1) they presuppose a correlation between intelligence and brain weight, (2) they make suppositions about the intelligence of animals which are unproven, and (3) they are based on a conception of cortical function which can no longer be considered valid.... There is a close correlation between the logarithms of brain and body weight, and this co-relation is linear. Brain weight increases as the 0.655th power of body weight. The value of the cephalization co-efficient k differs from species to species. Whether or not this is an indication of the intelligence of animals must be left to the psychologists to answer.”
One of the problems that the whales have, as compared to, say, the large shark, is breathing air while living in the sea. This requires that these animals reach the air-water interface relatively frequently—at least every one hour and a half for the bottlenose whale (Hyperoödon), three-quarters of an hour for the Sperm Whale (Physeter catadon), and every six minutes for Tursiops truncatus. This puts very stringent requirements on the relationship of the whales to other events within the sea. Each whale must know where the surface of the sea is at each instant and compute his future actions so that when he does run out of air he is near the surface. He is essentially a surface-to-depth and depth-to-surface oriented animal. He must travel at high speed at times in order to recapture enough air to continue whatever he is doing under the surface. This means that he must calculate his chances of obtaining a good breath of air during rain storms and similar situations. He can be violently thrown around at the surface unless he comes up in the trough rather than at the crest of the wave. Such calculations probably require an exercise of something more than just “instinct.”
Water-breathing animals, on the other hand, have no need for such calculations. If the surface gets rough, they move downward and stay there. The required maneuvers are very much simpler and the amount of computation is very much less.
This requirement for the whales implies that the information coming from every one of the senses, not just the skin, needs to be correlated very rapidly and in complex patterning to allow the animals to predict their future course safely and accurately. It also requires the use of large amounts of information from memory.
The predators of the sea, other than the whales themselves, make life in the sea rather a complex business for mammals. The very large sharks can and do attack whales, dolphins, and porpoises. At times such attacks are by overwhelming numbers of sharks on a relatively small number of dolphins. All of the older animals in our experience have at least one shark bite on them—the younger animals are protected by the older ones and most of them are not so dramatically scarred.
The whales, in turn, must track their own prey in order to obtain food. With the single known exception of Orca, none of their predators are air-breathers. In general, the whales’ diet consists of fish, squid, or other water-breathing organisms of the sea.
A scientific assessment of the position of these animals in the competitive environment of the sea is not yet fully evaluated quantitatively. Any pronouncement of the requirements in regard to new complex adaptations to new complicated situations and hence the evaluation of intelligence of these animals at this time is premature and presumptuous. The whole issue of the meaning and the use of these large brains is still very much unknown. As I say in Man and Dolphin,[7] I am espousing a plea for an open-minded attitude with respect to these animals. It would be presumptuous to assume that we at the present time can know how to measure their intelligence or their intellectual capacity. The usual behavioral criteria used in evaluation of intelligence of other animals are obviously inapplicable to a mammal living in the sea. As McBride and Hebb[8] so clearly stated, they cannot place the dolphin in any sort of intellectual comparative intelligence scale; they did not know the appropriate experimental questions to ask in order to compare the dolphins with the chimpanzees, for example. Comparing a handed-mammal with a flippered-mammal, each of which lives in an entirely separate and distinctive environment, is a very difficult intellectual task even for Homo sapiens.
In pursuing possible measures of intellectual and intelligent capacity, what line should one pursue? I explored this question somewhat in Man and Dolphin, but wish to summarize and extend it here in this discussion. The invariants that we are seeking somehow do not seem to be as concrete as “tool-making and tool-using ability” by means of the hands which has been one of the major alleged criteria for human adaptation and success. The chimpanzee and the gorilla have the hands but they do not have the brains to back up the use of the hands. Man has both the hands and the brain. Thus we can quite simply and concretely contrast the performance of the large brains of man with his hands to the smaller brains of the primates with their hands. When we consider the whales, we seem obsessed, as it were, with the necessity of our own nature to look for an analog of the hand and the manipulative ability. May it not be better to find a more general principle than just handedness and its use?
I suggest that we think more in terms of a physiologically appropriate set of more general mechanisms which may subsume several other human functions under the same principle. It seems to me that we must look for abilities to develop generalized dexterity of use for certain kinds of end purposes for any or all muscular outputs from the central nervous system. If there is a task to be done, such as lifting a stone, whether in water or air, a given animal may turn it over with his foot, with his flipper, with his hand, with his tail, or with any other body part with which he could obtain a purchase on the stone. The end task is turning over the stone, to obtain food or whatever. It makes little difference what kind of muscular equipment he uses just so he uses it appropriately.
Let me illustrate with a more complex example seen in our own laboratory. A baby dolphin was being nursed in a small tank artificially. It apparently needed the constant attention of a human attendant. Its mother had not been caught with it. After several days it discovered that if it banged on the bottom of the tank with its flipper in a rhythmic fashion it could bring the humans from the other room. (We heard a loud thumping sound transmitted from a hydrophone in its tank.) Previous to this it attempted to bring the humans from the other room by whistling the distress call of the dolphins; unlike its mother, the humans did not respond to the whistle. In a sense this distress call is in his instinctual pattern for obtaining food and aid by other dolphins. The secondary adaptation and the new effort was that of manipulating the flipper rather than the phonation mechanism in the blowhole. Thus driven by whatever the instinctual need is, it tried different outputs from its brain and finally discovered one which brought the desired results. This ability to change the output from unsuccessful ones to successful ones seems to me to be evidence of a “higher nervous system” function. Of course in fine gradation and small differences, the same kind of pattern can be shown for smaller-brained animals. It is the seeking a new output, not necessarily instinctually tied in, and the radicalness of the change of output, plus the relating of many of the variables to one another thus generating the new output, that seems to be the hallmark of the large brain. These problems are not single variable ones with simple cause and effect, but are simultaneous multiple variable ones.
Among the manipulable outputs (muscular groups) I would include those of respiration and phonation. The dexterous and finely differentiated use of these muscles generates all the complexities of human speech. As more of the physiology and psychology of human speech are analyzed and made part of our sciences, the sharper will be our criteria for separating man from the other animals, and from those with smaller brains. Scientific descriptions of human speech are of relatively recent origin. Scientific descriptions of the physiology of the vocal tract are anything but a closed book at the present time. The neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of speech is in a relatively primitive state of development as a science. With such a lack of knowledge of the intimate and detailed mechanisms concerned, it would be rather presumptuous to evaluate at the present time their role in the measurement and testing of intelligence and intellectual capacity.
However, I wish to point out that these factors are important in such an evaluation and become even more important in terms of evaluating a species that is not human. Thus it is necessary, in order to evaluate the intelligence of even the dolphins, much less the whales, to know something of their abilities in the areas of phonation and other kinds of bodily gestures and manipulations and hence in their abilities to communicate with one another. As I implied in Man and Dolphin, it is not possible to measure accurately the intelligence of any other being than that of a human being, mainly because we do not exchange ideas through any known communication mode with such beings.
The difficulties of such understanding as we can possibly gain of the real situation of the whales in the sea and their adaptation as mammals to this particular environment, can be illustrated by their use of sonic generators for the location of their prey and of the boundaries of their container by means of the perception of echoes. As is well known, the small mammals, such as the bat, use this mechanism in air.[9] The bottlenose dolphin also uses this same kind of mechanism underwater.[7][9][10] Because these animals are immersed in a medium of a density and a sound velocity comparable to the density and sound velocity of their own bodies, they can presumably use their sonar also in looking, as it were, inside one another’s body.[7] The sonar view of the inside of the body of a dolphin may possibly be very instructive to other dolphins and possibly even aid in diagnosis of the causes of certain problems, especially of those of the baby by the mother. For example, their buoyancy depends upon maintaining their center of gravity below their center of buoyancy; otherwise they turn over and drown. If the baby develops gas in stomach #1, he can develop problems in his buoyancy relationship which turn him over; however, the mother dolphin can probably easily find out whether or not there is a bubble of gas in the baby’s stomach by her echo ranging abilities. When she discovers such a bubble, she can then burp the baby by banging on the belly with her beak. We have seen such operations take place in our tanks. Here is another instance of the animal using a given output, coupled with the proper input, to diagnose a problem and to manipulate other outputs in the solution of that problem. How much of this is labeled “instinctual,” i.e., “unlearned,” is purely a matter of intellectual taste.
In the sea it is necessary to use sonic mechanisms for sightings and recognition. If one goes into the sea one realizes that one’s range of vision even under the best of circumstances is rarely beyond 100 feet and most of the time is less than that even near the brilliantly lit surface of the tropical seas. With sonic means, one’s range is extended up to several miles under the best of circumstances and under the worst to a few hundred feet.
Recently we have obtained evidence that shows that the dolphins communicate most of their information in the band of frequencies extending from about 8 kilocycles to 20 kilocycles by means of whistles and sonic clicks.[11] However, as shown by Schevill and Lawrence, they can hear sounds at least to 120 kilocycles[12] and as shown by Kellogg can produce sounds at least to 170 kilocycles.[10] We have recently been investigating the higher frequency bands in these animals and have reliable evidence that they can hear at least to 200 kilocycles and can produce sounds to at least 200 kilocycles.[7][13] With the proper electronic equipment one can listen to the nearer portions of the upper band and quickly determine that they can transmit in these bands without the necessity of transmitting in the (lower frequency) communication band. The high frequency information is broadcast in a narrow beam off the front of the beak as was first detected by Kenneth Norris.[14]
In these bands we find that they can produce musical tones or individual clickings or hissing-like noises. Recently we have found that an emotionally upset animal threatens other animals and humans by productions of very large amounts of energy both in the sonic communication band and in the ultrasonic bands. Recently we have had the opportunity of working with an old bull of 450 pounds weight who is so old his teeth have been ground down flat. In terms of his skeleton, he is the most massive animal we have ever seen. When he is irritated, his “barks” have sizable amounts of energy from about 0.5 to at least 300 kilocycles. He is also capable of transmitting in bands between 100 to 300 kilocycles without transmitting anything in the band from 8 kilocycles to 20 kilocycles in a narrow beam straight ahead of his body. When he is upset by the activities of a younger male, they face one another and blast at one another with short barks of this sort, meanwhile “threatening” by opening their mouths.
Since they live immersed in an acoustic world quite strange to us, we have great difficulty in appreciating the full life of these animals with respect to one another and their environment. From birth they are constantly bombarded with signals from the other animals of the same species and by echoes from the environment which they can apparently use very efficiently. Their ultrasonic (to us) emissions are not merely “sonar,” but are interpersonal and even emotional. These animals are not inanimate, cold pieces of sonar apparatus. They use their ultrasounds and their high-pitched sounds interpersonally with fervor in everything they do.[15]
We have demonstrated that the dolphins are quite capable of using vocal outputs as a demand for further rewards or for surcease from punishment. Their ability in the vocal sphere is quite sophisticated. In addition to the ultrasonic matters mentioned above, their sonic performance, when in close contact with man, is astonishing. In 1957 I discovered their ability to produce sounds similar to our speech sounds.[16] During the last two years we have had many opportunities to pursue further observations in this area. This emerging ability seems to be an adaptation to a new environment which includes Man.[17] They quickly discover that they can obtain various kinds of rewards by making what we now call “humanoid emissions.” When they make a sound which sounds similar to a human syllable or word, we express our pleasure by rewarding the animals in various ways. We have been exploring what some of these rewards are in order to elicit further such behavior under better control.