Here’s a great article on intelligence that, despite being written more than 25 years ago, is still a fascinating read. The author is Professor Bruce Fleury, an Evolutionary Biologist at Tulane University. [Thanks to Dr. Fleury for permission to repost the article here on smartkit].
While we spin elaborate theories about the nature and distribution of alien intelligence, we generally ignore the presence of intelligent aliens on our own planet, beings which preceded us in evolving a complex brain by over thirty million years.
These terrestrial aliens are the Cetaceans, a large group of marine mammals which includes the whales, dolphins, and porpoises. In several respects, these graceful and curious animals can serve as a useful model for our attempts to communicate with extraterrestrial beings. We are likely to encounter many of the same types of problems in breaking the communication barrier between human and dolphin that we will discover in attempting to communicate with an extraterrestrial intelligence.
The intelligence of the dolphin (Tursiops truncates) still remains a matter of some controversy among researchers, but there can be little doubt that the Cetacean brain has reached a level of evolution matched only by the primates. In every area in which gross neuroanatomy has been correlated with intelligence, the dolphin’s brain is highly developed. Both their brain and ours, for example, have an extremely intricate cerebral cortex. Although the dolphin’s cortex is somewhat thinner, with neurons packed much less densely than our own, its surface is folded and fissured to a much greater extent than the human brain, providing a vast cortical surface area. The associational cortex, or "silent brain", which is responsible for the most basic human qualities, is large in the dolphin in the very same areas in which ours is larger than the apes.
Despite the dolphin’s fundamental biological similarity to ourselves, they have evolved into creatures with whom, at least superficially, we seem to have little in common. The dolphin’s biochemistry and physiology, however, is much like our own. They are air breathers, warm blooded, and bear live young like any other mammal.
The Cetaceans were once land animals who, in some yet unknown geologic past, returned to the sea and adapted to a new set of biological demands. The oceanic environment demanded a streamlining of form for more rapid movement in a denser medium. The bones on the upper and lower limbs gradually fused, evolving into flukes and flippers better suited to the Cetacean’s new mode of existence.
Since the murky ocean depths preclude the heavy reliance many mammals place on the visual cortex in obtaining food, Cetaceans evolved a complex echolocation system, analogous to radar but using sound waves in the water. Sound travels four and one half times faster in water than in air and can travel over much larger distances.
It is entirely possible that this great dependence on sonic echolocation or sonar was the factor that triggered the development of the Cetacean brain. Dolphins are able to make fine sonic discriminations between objects underwater which far exceed the visual acuity of humans. While the dolphin’s sonar evolved primarily as an efficient means of hunting prey, the constant presence in the dark waters of the dolphin’s mortal enemy, the shark, may also have provided an evolutionary incentive for the development of this highly accurate sonar system.
There is a great deal of evidence that these signals have been adapted from food gathering and navigation to communication. Dr. John C. Lilly, the noted delphinologist, has demonstrated the ability of dolphins, isolated from one another in every respect but sonically, to teach simple tasks to one another. The level of vocal exchanges between dolphins in captivity and in the open sea suggests a highly social relationship between individuals, based on their ability to exchange information in the form of trains of sonic impulses.
We usually refer to the coordination of hand and eye, vital for living in trees, in our attempts to explain the explosive evolution of the human brain. In a similar fashion the neural structures required to transmit, receive, and translate the extraordinarily complex acoustical signals generated by the dolphins may have been the spur to their evolution as a non-manipulative intelligence.
This aspect of dolphin evolution leads us to the first problem in the dolphin/alien example. We tend to associate the use of the hand, especially the opposable thumb, with the evolution of an intelligent civilization. This very provincial prejudice pervades our imaginative literature and much of our research efforts. Man, it is repeatedly said, is the measure of all things.
If the dolphin does have, as Dr. Lilly suspects, a sophisticated culture with an oral tradition, we will have to revise our ideas of what constitutes an intelligent civilization. Dolphins erect no permanent structures, use no tools, possess no science (as we understand it), and are so streamlined as to lack the ability to use the facial expressions and body language we rely on in our own society.
Although we are not accustomed to accepting intelligence in a non-human form, who is to say that the dolphin’s water based, acoustically oriented "culture" is not at least as widespread in the universe as our own "manipulatory/visual" one?
Try a Smartkit PLEXUS puzzle.
Share This Post:
![[Slashdot]](http://www.smart-kit.com/wp-content/uploads/_graphics/slashdot-big.png)
![[Reddit]](http://www.smart-kit.com/wp-content/uploads/_graphics/reddit-big.png)
![[Facebook]](http://www.smart-kit.com/wp-content/uploads/_graphics/facebook-icon.gif)
![[Google]](http://www.smart-kit.com/wp-content/uploads/_graphics/google-bookmark-big.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.smart-kit.com/wp-content/uploads/_graphics/stumble-big.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.smart-kit.com/wp-content/uploads/_graphics/digg-big.png)
Subscribe
