Good morning and welcome to Weirdbeautiful.
The big wildlife story this week is the statement by zoologist Lori Morino that dolphins are "too clever to be treated as animals" and should have status as "non-human" people. Prof Morino is biologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and has been using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to map the brains of dolphin species and compare them with those of primates.
A lot of scientists tend to roll their eyes at the mention of studies of animal intelligence. This is partly because it is such an emotive/subjective issue-so the media tends to get very excited and make exagerated claims based on pretty much any study in the subject. The other reason is that intelligence is a very difficult thing to measure- what do you mean by intelligence? Is a chimpanzee, who can communicate using pictures with his human keepers "brighter" than a dog, who cannot but who can read a human's emotions and follow his master's gaze to find food? Different types of intelligence have evolved in different animals, depending upon their needs and their lifestyles/ecological niches.
You can find more detail on Lori Morino's dolphin studies here-
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6973994.ece
A little while back (last March, in fact) The Daily Telegraph ran another interesting story on the science of intelligence- specifically the brain-power of the humble bumblebee, which is also an interesting read-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5039387/Might-of-the-bumblebee.html
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This is a really interesting article on bees and the research into their behaviour. It is surprising to think of them as inteligent beings, however they do appear to be quite bright. Interesting indeed.
ReplyDeleteWho would have thought that Bees could be so interesting?
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