The Dolphin is believed to be the most intelligent animal on earth with a brain much larger than the humans and the capacity to use their brain in ways the human can’t yet understand. They can use sonar to communicate, map their surroundings as well as stun prey to just scratch the surface.
The first scientific attempts to assess dolphin intelligence in a serious way came in the 1950s and 1960s with John Lilly, a scientist that studied bottlenose dolphin vocalization. Lilly’s early work laid the groundwork for studying dolphin brains and intelligence.While this was not considered a success or kind to say the least, it was considered groundbreaking. Lilly tested the boundaries of testing the dolphin brain by inserting electrodes into a dolphin’s brain to cause a response of language and pleasure.
Thankfully it was quickly learned by Lilly and others that the dolphin brain is best studied by not dissecting or inserting electrodes, but by observing them in the wild and learning from their behaviour and language.
The Dolphin possess many traits to make it “smart”, but we still have many mysteries to understand and observe. They have the ability to heal their body through regeneration, possibly speak using telepathy and most recently its has been discovered how they can dive and surface by using massive vascular plexuses (retia mirabilia) whose function is unknown. All cerebral blood flow passes through these retia, and we hypothesize that they protect cetacean brains from locomotion-generated pulsatile blood pressures. We propose that cetaceans have evolved a pulse-transfer mechanism that minimizes pulsatility in cerebral arterial-to-venous pressure differentials without dampening the pressure pulses themselves.
Most people wouldn’t say that controlling buoyancy is “intelligence”, but keep in mind that a dolphin breathes by choice and its brain has to signal ots body to protect itself from damaging their brain or organs.
The Mysterious Dolphin Brain
The abstract of what is intelligence and what is smart can be endlessly argued. Regardless of how the dolphin brain evolved, they deserve our respect and protection. Hawaii Dolphin Watch is dedicated to supporting the safe study of dolphin intelligence and the dolphin brain so we can better understand their connection to the ocean and how we can co-exist.
Dolphin News