Figure 1. A 16th-Century Impression of a Whale (by Konrad Gesner).
Notice the four large human-like breasts, the two long tubes on top of the head, the beetling brow, the misplaced giant eye, the teeth and the doglike snarling facial expression, the rays in the tail. None of these exist in any known modern whale or dolphin or porpoise. All modern whales, dolphins, and porpoises have two teats, at the genital slit only, which are long and narrow, not hemispherical; the blowhole slits are flush with the skin at the true forehead; the relatively small eyes are at the posterior angle of the jaw; baleen whales have no teeth; large toothed whales have only a few teeth; no “facial” expression is detectable on whales, dolphins, or porpoises; the tale flukes of all species are smooth skinned, not rayed like a fish.
NAVTAE IN DORSA CETORVM, QVAE INSVLAS PVTANT,
anchoras figentes sæpe periclitantur. Hos cetos Trolual sua lingua
appellant, Germanice Teüffelwal.
Figure 2. An Improved Portrayal of a Whale (Gilliam van de GouWen, 1598).
Apparently this is a toothed whale, a sperm whale. The lower body (flukes, penis, lower jaw and moth and teeth) is quite accurate. The ear is fanciful, as is the eye.
Figure 3. Whaling in the 19th Century.
Sperm whale being lanced and blowing blood. (Painting in the collection of the Old Dartmouth Historical Society, New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Mass.; copy through the courtesy of Phillip Purrington, Curator.)
Figure 4. Whaling in the 19th Century.
A sperm whale is attacking a whale boat with his jaws after being provoked by Man. There is no record of an unprovoked attack on a man or a boat or a ship by a whale. (Courtesy of Phillip Purrington, New Bedford.)
Figure 5. One of the First Drawings of a Porpoise’s (Phocaena) Brain (Gottfried Reinhold Trediramus, 1818).
This is an anterior view. The hemispheres are artificially separated for unknown reasons. The optic nerves and tracts are shown. The complex fissuration is obvious. (Courtesy of Dr. Mary A. B. Brazier, UCLA.)
Figure 6. Early Drawings of the Brain of the Dolphin and of the Porpoise by Tiedemann.
These drawings were reproduced by H. G. L. Reichenbach in his Anatomia Mammalium in 1845. These are more accurate renditions and show the lateral expansion of these fine brains. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)
Figure 7. The First 20th-Century Drawing of a Dolphin Brain (G. Elliot Smith, 1902).
Lateral view. The proportions are excellent, as are the gyri and sulci. Smith gives the species as Delphinus tursio; this probably corresponds to the modern Tursiops truncatus or bottlenose dolphin. This brain closely resembles that of Tursiops shown in photos in reference 7. Langworthy’s 1931 drawings (“Porpoise”) are also similar (Brain, 54, 225, 1931).
Figure 8. Mesial View of Same Brain as in Figure 7.
We demonstrated that, like other animals, the monkey, the rat, etc., these animals can be rewarded by stimulating the proper places in their brains.[16][18] In a recent series of experiments we have been establishing the controls necessary to understanding what brain rewards mean in terms of natural physiology. We have demonstrated quite formally that rubbing the skin of these animals with our hands is a rewarding experience to them; they will seek it vocally and by body gestures and give certain kinds of performance in order to obtain this reward.
Recently we have found that “vocal transactions” are a reward to these animals.[7][13] (See below for human analogies in the child.) This seems to be one of the basic factors in our being able to elicit humanoid emissions. The vocal transactions are started by a human shouting some words over the water of the tank in which the animal is residing. A single word may be used or many words—it makes little difference. Eventually the animal in the tank will raise his blowhole out of water and make some sort of a humanoid emission or whistle or clicks in a delphinese fashion. If the human immediately replies with some word or words, the animal may immediately respond, the human answers, and a vocal transaction is under way. We have shown that dolphins naturally do this with one another in both their whistle and clicking spheres, and sometimes do it in the barking sphere.[13] How much of this is “instinctual” and how much is not, there is no way of knowing at the present time.
A physical analysis of such vocal transactions shows them to be formally quite as complex as the vocal transactions between human beings. In other words, the dolphin may say one word or a syllable-like emission, or many, one right after the other, as may the humans. If the human says one word, the dolphin may say one, two, three, or four, and if the human says one, two, three, or four, the dolphin may say one. There is no necessary master-slave kind of relationship in the delphinic emissions.
In our early reports we gave examples which were single words which sounded like the words that the human made.[16][7] This presentation led to misunderstandings among our scientific colleagues. It looked as if the animals were doing a slavish tape-recorder rendition of what we were doing in a fashion similar to that of a parrot or a Mynah bird. All along we have known that the dolphins did not do such a slavish job and were obviously doing a much more complicated series of actions. We are just beginning to appreciate how to analyze and what to analyze in these transactions. As I stated in Man and Dolphin about 10% of these emissions sound like human speech. In other words, the dolphin is “saying” far more than we have transmitted to the scientific community to date. We hesitate to say anything more about this until we begin to understand what is going on in greater detail. We are making progress slowly.
Let me then make an appeal to you—a long appeal to your logical and rational views of man and cetaceans. Here I review the above points in more general terms, and develop a plea for a new science—a new discipline combining the best of science with the best of the humanities.
Several old questions should be revived and asked again with a new attitude, with more modern techniques of investigation and with more persistence. It may take twenty years or more to develop good answers; meanwhile the intellectual life of man will profit in the undertaking. There is something exciting and even at times disturbing in this quest.[19] The bits and pieces may have started before historical times. In each age of man a new fragment was allowed to be recorded and passed on to subsequent generations. Each generation judged and rejudged the evidence from the older sources on the basis of its then current beliefs and on the basis of its new experiences, if any. At times good evidence was attenuated, distorted, and even destroyed in the name of the then current dogma.
Today we have similar problems; our current beliefs blind us, too. Evidence right before the eye can be distorted by the eye of the beholder quite as powerfully as it has been in previous ages of man. We can only hope that we have achieved greater insight and greater objectivity than some of our ancestors. The winds and currents of bias and prejudice blow hard and run deep in the minds of men. In one’s own mind these factors are difficult to see, and when seen, difficult to attenuate and to allow for their influence. If at times I scold my own species, do not take it too personally; I am scolding myself more than you.
You can see by now that I believe that some of the answers to the quest are in our own minds. We must develop, imaginatively and humbly, numbers of alternative hypotheses to expand the testable areas of the intellect and bring to the investigation new mental instruments to test and to collect facts germane to our questions.
To ask about the intelligence of another species, we somehow first ask: how large and well-developed is its brain? Somewhat blindly we link brain size (a biological fact) to intelligence (a behavioral and psychological concept). We know, in the case of our own species, that if the brain fails to develop, intelligence also fails to develop.
How do we judge in our own species that intelligence develops or fails to develop? We work with the child and carefully observe its performances of common tasks and carefully measure its acquisition of speech quantitatively. We measure (among other factors) size of word vocabulary, adequacy of pronunciation, lengths of phrases and sentences, appropriateness of use, levels of abstraction achieved, and the quality of the logical processes used. We also measure speed of grasping new games with novel sets of rules and strategy; games physical and/or games verbal and vocal.
Normal mental growth patterns of human children have been measured extensively in both performance and in vocal speech acquisition. I have taken the liberty of relating these to the normal growth of brain weight of children.
TABLE I
Threshold Quantities for Human Acquisition of Speech: Age and Brain Weight[7]
| Age (months) | Brain weight[8] (grams) | Speech stages[9] (first appearances) |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 480 | Responds to human voice, cooing, and vocalizes pleasure. |
| 4 | 580 | Vocal play. Eagerness and displeasure expressed vocally. |
| 6 | 660 | Imitates sounds. |
| 9 | 770 | First word. |
| 11 | 850 | Imitates syllables and words. Second word. |
| 13 | 930 | Vocabulary expands rapidly. |
| 17 | 1,030 | Names objects and pictures. |
| 21 | 1,060 | Combines words in speech. |
| 23 | 1,070 | Uses pronouns, understands prepositions, uses phrases and sentences. |
Table 1 shows relations between age, brain weight, and speech performance, up to 23 months, 1070 grams, and the use of full sentences. By 17 years, the brain reaches and levels off at 1450 grams and the number of words, levels of abstraction, etc., are so large as to be difficult to assess.
In these processes, what are the minimum necessary but not necessarily sufficient factors?[20] On the biological side, modern theory concentrates on two factors: total numbers of neurons and the number of interconnections between them. On the psychological side, modern theory concentrates on the numbers of occurrences of reinforced contingencies experienced, the number of repetitions, and the number of adequate presentations from the accepted set of the consensus known as “native language,” and the total numbers of sets in the stored memories at a given age. In addition, of course, is the adequate development of the transmitting and of the receiving equipment needed for speech and its ancillary behaviors.
On the biological side, modern neurology says the number of neurons in the human brain reaches maximum value before birth at about 13 billions. After this point, the increase in weight consists of increased numbers of fibers, increased connections, increased size of elements, and increased efficiency and selectivity of transmission. Thus the increase in weight of the human brain from about 400 to 1400 grams seems to be devoted to improving its internal (as well as external) communication, storage, and computation networks. As I have stated elsewhere (Man and Dolphin), it is my impression that there exist critical threshold values in the brain’s growth pattern at which certain kinds of performance become possible. Complex speech acquisition seems related to brain weights of 800 to 1000 grams, but no smaller. This assumes, of course, numbers of neurons (10¹⁰) and numbers of connections and opportunities for learning and time to learn commonly found with humans.
The critical psychological factors in speech acquisition are slowly being dug out and described.[21][22] Among these the most important seem to be a continuous background of presentations to the child in rewarding circumstances of speech and its close relations to objects, actions, satisfaction of needs, and persons. Imitation of one’s use of facial and vocal apparatus appears spontaneously in the happy child. The virtuosity of the child as a mimic is truly astonishing.
I am also impressed by evidence for what I call the “transactional drive.” A bright child seems to seek and respond best to those persons who respond in kind, back and forth in exchanges of sounds and linked actions. For example, if one starts such a transaction with a child of 22 months with a loud word, if he is ready, he may return his version of the word or a slight variant; if one replies with another variant the child replies with still a third, or even suddenly with a new word, and so on back and forth in a transactional vocal dance. Or one may reply to a child who invites such an exchange to begin. Such exchanges seem to function as rewards of themselves, and hence the name, “transactional drive.” This phenomenon is more than mere mechanical slavish mimicry. It seems to aid in perfecting pronunciation, increases vocabulary, increases the bonds with other persons, serves to substitute the “consensus-dictionary” words for the private baby words, and is thus essential to learning a language of one’s own species. It is thus that the child “becomes human.”
As the child ages and grows, the exchanges lengthen, and the time during which each member of the dyad is quiet while the other speaks becomes longer, until finally for a half hour or so, I am lecturing and you are at least quiet, if not listening.
How does all of this relate to modern dolphins, porpoises, and whales? From the vast array of scientific facts and theories about our own species, a few of those which I feel are useful in approaching another species to evaluate its intelligence are discussed above. But before I make connections there, let us attenuate some interfering attitudes and points of view, some myths not so modern; these interfering presumptions can be stated as follows:
- (1) No animal has a language comparable to a human language.
- (2) No animal is as intelligent as man.
- (3) Man can adapt himself to any environment quite as well as any animal.
- (4) Intelligence and intellect can be expressed only in the ways man expresses or has expressed them.
- (5) All animal behavior is instinct-determined.
- (6) None of man’s thought and behavior is so determined.
- (7) Only man thinks and plans; animals are incapable of having a mental life.
- (8) Philosophy and contemplative and analytic thought are characteristic only of man, not of any animal.
All of these statements stem from ignorance and anthropocentricity. For example, who are we to say that whales, dolphins, and porpoises are to be included as “dumb beasts”? It would be far more objective and humble to tell the truth—we don’t know about these animals because we haven’t “been there yet.” We have not lived in the sea, naked and alone, or even in mobile groups, without steel containers to keep out the sea itself. For purposes of discussion let us make the following assumptions which push counter to the current of bias running deep among us:
- (1) Man has not yet been willing to investigate the possibility of another intelligent species.
- (2) Whales, dolphins, and porpoises are assumed to be “dumb beasts” with little or no evidence for this presumption.
- (3) We do not yet know very much about these animals—their necessities, their intelligences, their lives, the possibility of their communications.
- (4) It is possible for man to investigate these matters objectively with courage and perseverance.
- (5) To properly evaluate whales, dolphins, porpoises, we must use everything we have intellectually, all available knowledge, humanistic as well as scientific.
Our best knowledge of ourselves as a species, as humans, is in the humanities and in the budding, growing sciences of man. In pursuit of understanding of the whales, dolphins, and porpoises, we need, at least at the beginning, a large view which is in the human sciences and in the humanities. The sciences of animals are necessarily restrictive in their view, and hence not yet applicable to our problems.
The history of the animal sciences shows that they have had grave difficulties with the fact that the observers are present and human. These sciences, like physics, chemistry, and biology, play the game as if the human observer were not there and the systems were isolated from man. This is fine strategy for “man-less nature” studies and quite appropriate for such studies.
However, I submit to you another view, for a science of man and animal, their relationships to one another. Modern man and modern dolphin and whale may be best investigated in the framework of a new science one might call “anthropo-zoology” or “zoo-anthropology.” This science is a deep study of man, of the animal, of their mutual relations, present and potential. In this discipline scientists encourage close relations with the animal, and study the developing relation between man and so-called “beast.”
For the last three years in the Communication Research Institute[23] we have been pursuing an investigative path in this new science with the pair “man and bottlenose dolphin.” We have encouraged and pursued studies in classical sciences such as neurophysiology, animal psychology, anatomy, biophysics, and zoology. We have also initiated and pursued this new science of the man and dolphin relation; these “homo-delphic” studies, if you will, are triply demanding: we must not only know our animal objectively but we must know man objectively, and ourselves subjectively. We cannot fight shy of involving ourselves in the investigation as objects also. In this science man, and hence one’s own self, are part of the system under investigation. This is not an easy discipline. One must guard quite as rigorously (or even more so) against the pitfalls of wishful thinking and sensational fantasy as in other scientific endeavors. This field requires a self-candor, an inner honesty, and a humility quite difficult to acquire. But I maintain that good science can be done here, that the field is a proper one for properly trained and properly motivated investigators.
REFERENCES AND NOTES
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Seminar Papers
Editing Donne and Pope. 1952.
Problems in the Editing of Donne’s Sermons, by George R. Potter.
Editorial Problems in Eighteenth—Century Poetry, by John Butt.
Music and Literature in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. 1953.
Poetry and Music in the Seventeenth Century, by James E. Phillips.
Some Aspects of Music and Literature in the Eighteenth Century, by Bertrand H. Bronson.
Restoration and Augustan Prose. 1956.
Restoration Prose, by James R. Sutherland.
The Ironic Tradition in Augustan Prose from Swift to Johnson, by Ian Watt.
Anglo-American Cultural Relations in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. 1958.
The Puritans in Old and New England, by Leon Howard.
William Byrd: Citizen of the Enlightenment, by Louis B. Wright.
The Beginnings of Autobiography in England, by James M. Osborn. 1959.
Scientific Literature in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England. 1961.
English Medical Literature in the Sixteenth Century, by C. D. O’Malley.
English Scientific Literature in the Seventeenth Century, by A. Rupert Hall.
- Francis Bacon’s Intellectual Milieu. A Paper delivered by Virgil K. Whitaker at a meeting at the Clark Library, 18 November 1961, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Bacon’s birth.
Methods of Textual Editing, by Vinton A. Dearing. 1962.
Transcriber’s Notes
- Silently corrected a few typos.
- Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.
- In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.