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Science

Uplifting Dolphins 206

Posted by michael from the so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-touchscreens dept.
zephc writes "Wired is reporting that a group of researchers are working with an artificial language of whistles in an attempt to communicate with dolphins."
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Uplifting Dolphins More

Uplifting Dolphins

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  • Does this mean that soon Nike will be able to pay dolphins 5 cents an hour to do labor? well sense they're not human slavery would be ok i guess...awsome, exploiting third world countries wasn't profitable enough, now theres a whole new "minority" to rape for profits! yeehaw! let freedumb roar!

  • Dolphins are stupid!!! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    OK, that is an exaggeration, but I don't think they are much smarter than a big wet dog. I worked as an intern in a series of psych experiements trying to get dolphins to replicate Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's keyboard communication with chimps, and multiple years of training would only give the dolphins a 20 word "vocabulary". That's pretty lame. I think David Brin summarized it best. Read here [google.com] to see what he had to say

  • Re:Just a suggestion (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yes, but dolphin's hearing is much more like our siight - they build a 3d-world map using sonar, so their "hearing" is still in the spatial domain, as well as the temporal. Humans have a little ability in this area - we can tell where a sound is coming from, and with _years_ of practice, some people, particularly musicians/ orchestra conductors/opera-hall architects, can tell the rough shape of a room from the echoes in it.

    So, some concepts that might at first seem "sight based" are in fact "spatially based", and so would still make sense to a dolphin - e.g. "round", "fuzzy", "near" etc - and there's even the soinic analogue of colours, since different objects reflect ehcolocation clicks in different ways.

    And dolphins do have reasonably good eyesight, too, by the way - they're short sighted in air (however that means they see better underwater), but they have eyes that are forward facing-enough for binocular vision (they are, after all, pack hunters like most animals we rate as "intelligent" - humans, chimps, wolves/dogs, etc). Chances are, they use their eyes for the final moments of moving in for the kill.
    3

  • Er... Tuna have blood, quite definitely. Fish blood, but it is red...

  • David Brin : Uplift == very good read (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For those of you who don't happen to know or who are not familiar with literature ( ;0) ): David Brin, "Uplift" and sequels very good read

  • Whatever the first coherent sentence is... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Consider:

    -- Dolphins are one of the few species, other than humans, who have sex just for the pleasure of it.

    -- Male dolphins, particularly younger ones, will often hump anything that (a), moves, (b) doesn't hurt, and (c), may not move. I know this from personal observation (and, with a whole pool's worth of mixed male/female population, it provided hours of entertainment that I think would have made even Hugh Hefner blush!)

    Whatever the first coherent sentence received from a dolphin ends up being, I would wager that it will be very X-rated. ;-)

  • Exactly!

    Now, what do you do for food?

    Do you eat plants?

    How dare you assume that you can eat plants and not eat animals! Who said plants weren't as good as animals? If one living thing has worth, then they all have worth! Don't you dare eat the plants!

    Don't drink water either. Who said that H20 molecules deserve to quench your thirst? Just die.
  • Dude, have you ever cleaned and filleted a tuna?

    I'm guessing not, since you'd remember having to wash the blood off of your hands, knife, table, ect.

    The real question is whether trolls like you have blood.

    Don Negro

  • Re:Just a suggestion (Score:3)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <`imipak' `at' `yahoo.com'> on Monday February 26, 2001 @03:35AM (#403362) Homepage Journal
    If the assumption was valid, the conclusion would also be valid.

    However, other dolphin researchers have noted that dolphins are primarily visual in clear water and use sound most when visibility is impaired.

    Dolphins are also tactile animals, using touch as a method of communication.

    The idea of borrowing skills and ideas from people who are familiar with a non-visual world is great, IMHO. It only works, though, if that's the problem you're trying to solve.

    IMHO, there are too many "dolphin experts", with too many contradictory ideas. Dolphin studies, right now, are not much more advanced than medieval alchemy. Without the benefit of being able to recognise either lead or gold.

  • Good I can type in my CC# over an unsecure connection then have it emailed to some one...
  • I'm surprised that no one's mentioned that Project Delphis utilizes PowerMac G4's and Mac OS X [apple.com] to process the language of the dolphins. The story appeared a while back at Apple's Science&Technology site [apple.com]
  • Exactly. The only adjectives which would be visual would be colors and levels of brightness. Any other descriptions of objects can be experienced by touch or other senses.

    LetterJ
    Head Geek
  • You're right, my math example was horribly flawed; I was getting sleepy when I wrote that.

    I shouldn't even have said "four word sentences", for that matter, since that implies there might be meaning attached to each position in the sentence, implying some kind of grammar, which is actually part of what Brin is contradicting. One or two word order-insensitive sentences would be more to the point.

    Brin's essay didn't give specific numerical data, as I recall, so I'll just leave it there.

  • David Brin, who coined the "uplift" term in the title of this article, also had some very interesting comments to make about dolphin communication (and therefore implicitly about upper bounds on dolphin intelligence).

    Brin has written fascinating science fiction about genetically-alterered dolphins actually crewing and captaining starships, but it's interesting to note that he has also strongly critiqued non-fictional hopes of communication with unaltered dolphins.

    In his essay Dogma of Otherness (originally published in Analog, Apr 1986, collected in his book Otherness, 1994), he points out that, long ago, dolphin researchers analyzed dolphin "speech" (sonic and ultrasonic sound emission), and simply applied information theory to the sounds, and discovered that, no matter whether we understand what dolphins are saying or not, nonetheless, they don't seem to be saying very much: they use only a few sound patterns, which are only used in short sequences.

    (Information theory, to oversimplify, allows us to say "if there are only N bits of variation in a message, then that message cannot possibly convey more than 2^N bits of information, regardless of what those bits mean." It separates the question of the often-unknown meaning of messages, from the question of how many messages might in principle be communicated with any given communication system. It has been invaluable in e.g. cryptography and computer science since the WWII era.)

    In other words, there just isn't very much information that can be extracted (in an information-theory sense) from dolphin sonic signals, regardless of what those signals mean. It's as if we can see that they have (e.g.) a 6 word vocabulary, and never use more than 4 words in a sentence, and never speak in paragraphs. No matter what they're saying, that would limit them to communicating no more than 24 thoughts total -- period.

    (I'm making up the above numbers in order to get across the gist of Brin's essay.)

    What this means is that, it doesn't *matter* whether we understand dolphin "speech" or not, because their speech just doesn't contain enough information to convey very much. In particular, Brin's argument says that there is no way in hell that dolphins could be using sonic holograms, or any other large-information-conveying signals.

    Brin might, of course, be wrong in his interpretation of dolphin research, but I personally have seen nothing to refute him in the 15 years since I first read his essay.

    That still leaves us the option of Uplifting dolphins, of course, just as Brin does in his fiction. That is, making dolphins intelligent, rather than hoping they already are intelligent.

    As to other primate communication, another poster in this thread claimed a chimp made signs quoted as "Tickle me, then bring me one of those bananas. Oh, and I would like to watch some TV

    That's laughable. The original signs were literally "Tickle. Banana. TV.". Paraphrasing those (admittedly interesting) signs into full sentences is a kind of blatant lie, in my book.

    Chimps and apes are pretty smart. But they don't use complex grammar, and pretending otherwise doesn't help them (nor us).

  • 1997 - Ukrainian dolphins trained by the Soviet Navy for military operations are now being used for therapy with autistic and emotionally disturbed children. Now there's an interesting reason to communicate with dolphins. It hits awfully close to home, as my son has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism. Too bad the local zoo doesn't have any kind of marine mammal program.... :o(
  • Did you perchance miss the bit where humans took over the earth? Or the bit where we've near-on exterminated all the more inconvenient other species? Did you miss the part where humans have no significant predators left in countries where intelligence is valued? Or the promise from intelligently-designed space flight of off-world colonies that mean even a planetbuster or a global plague wouldn't kill us all?

    Methinks you didn't really give enough thought to that one.
  • I've considered this question at length, and have finally developed a system to determine which animals I can or cannot kill:


    Unique data content.


    Hit a mouse with a hard disk, be arrested and fined for cruelty to the hard disk?
  • Will this cause man to stop tring to polluting the ocean or will just cause us to exploit another speices. I believe this will not be a good thing for the dolphins.
  • Is this a troll? Maybe I'm a fish...

    The purpose is quite easy and clear. Once there is a common set of words understood on both sides it becomes possible to ask simple questions of the dolphins. From that we will learn more about them from their own responses than by mere observation alone. This was the case with teaching apes sign language and it will be the case with any animal that we can develop a common language that allows simple questions to be asked.

    The simple fact is that we don't have the ability yet to understand what they are saying... however we do have the ability to communicate in a common form with common words. Doesn't matter if its something new for both of us; just as long as both parties can really understand it.
  • I don't actually expect this project to work... In my opinion something based on ideas would have a much better impact and help speed up the possability of asking questions (ie common "words" for food/playtime/warm/cold).

    But, who says we shouldn't expect dolphins to understand our linguistic nature? How will we know if we don't try? Recent studies have shown that a bit of "music" is in all mammals... and our human languages (as diverse as they may all be) are nothing but ideas expressed via sound.

    That's a pretty good core to share.
  • given that ulaanbaatar is the capital city of mongolia, they must be way lost.

  • I'm no Luddite, I'd love to be able to talk to dolphins and/or apes...but you can't teach language to apes and dolphins. Language isn't just a matter of brute processing power of the brain. It requires innate wiring created to handle it.

    ...Which is already present, because these species already use language to communicate with themselves.

    The problem is teaching them a lanugage that _we_ can understand. This has already been done for apes and chimps (apes with sign language, chimps with keyboards). Dolphins are trickier, but that's mainly a practical issue (they can't sign or type, so we're working ona whistle code).

    That apes and dolphins are capable of using language is not in question. The question is "are they smart enough to be considered people under the law", which can only be assessed by direct communication of better quality than we've managed to achieve to date. This is an engineering problem, not a theoretical problem (we know it can be done, but not how to do it).

  • sex and talking (Score:3)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @04:42AM (#403376)
    Dolphins resemble humans in a couple aspects:
    First they both talk incessentantly, far more than
    is needed for survival. Second, they both have
    sex far more than needed for procreation.
    Perhaps they'd undersatnd each other's bawdy jokes.

  • The researches have started out naming objects. Think about a dolphin's natural habit. There just aren't that many objects they care about - other fish, and themselves. IF there is a dolphin natural language, it is not going to be chuck full of nouns. They might have names for themselves, other fish, the water, the sky, and the ocean flow.

    Relating to them on the level of simple human objects is certainly the simplest for humans, and is the way historically we have learned each other's languages, but I doubt it is going to work with a species whose natural environment is so alien to our own.

    And besides, why is it so hard to tell if dolphins are actually speaking intelligently with one another with their clicks and whistles. What they do seems complex, yes, so we seem to stop there and say 'they are talking'. Why don't we subject their 'talk' to rigorous analysis and decode it. If there is not enough structure to it that we can't decode it, we are either too dumb to understand, or it is little more than bird song (that would be my guess).

    -josh
  • I don't see why you should be commenting on the subject of animal language comprehension when you don't even seem to be able to understand the meaning of the "last comment".
  • Niven's Known Space features intelligent dolphins and humans who communicate with them. His novel World of Ptavvs in particular features them (though it doesn't revolve around them).
  • This may be the only way to determine whether or not dolphins have a language of their own.

    There may still be problems, due to the difference between different species (who could predict that people would have a language and that chimpanzees would not?). Other problems might be at a more gramatical level. I have often wondered whether or not dolphins could project a sonic holograph, or at least enough of one for another dolphin to interpolate. If they did some sort of mpeg style compression, it might not look at all like speech.

    Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
  • > It's been said before, but it needs repeating:
    > what about the tuna? Why worry about killing all
    > those dolphins when we're so intent on killing
    > the damn tuna? If you cut tuna, do they not
    > bleed?

    Because we eat the tuna. Therefore we furthur life. By your argument, why do we kill carrots -- I mean, not only are they alive, but they take longer to die, and are often *eaten* alive.

    We aren't eating the dolphins.

    (I strongly suspect, also, that tuna have a better energy use-to-energy output ratio -- i.e. they eat fewer sunlight-calories than dolphin, pound for pound, but I could be wrong about that)

  • The concept you're trying for is 'grammer', and yes, it is hardwired (humans are hardwired to create grammer, not for specific grammatical rules). For a nifty discussion of this (in non-verbal languages, as well) see _Seeing_Voices_ -- I believe by oliver sacks...

    That said, I'm not convinced that at least some animals *don't* have language. In this case 'I don't know' is a more intellectually honest answer than 'absolutely not' -- how would we know if dolphins have vocabulary and grammar? we're talking a completely alien species here. Up until the last century even deaf humans who used sign language were often considered sub-intelligent and without language. If you still believe this about deaf humans and/or sign language, please do read the above book.

  • > For humans, "teaching" language is not a
    > necessity. Consider: EVERY child brought up (in
    > non-pathological conditions, c.f. "Genie")
    > learns language.

    False: See autism and hearing disorders.

    My two year old (now three) went to speech therapy to do what your two year old does naturally. That said, it's fairly clear that his usage of language (now) is the same as that of most other three year old children. Just because it must be taught doesn't mean that the individual is mimicking the language after it's taught.

  • data: he's autistic. best theory is that because of the sensory issues involved he didn't automatically pick up language the way most kids do. He had to be guided to it. Once he was guided to it, though, he's taken to it fairly well.

    The point I was trying to make is that you seemed to be trying to draw some line between 'taught behavior' and roteness -- and it's not nearly that simple.

  • So Long and Thanks For All the Fish?
  • If you look at the two major presidential candidates for the last US election there's an obvious reason why we're looking for intelligence outside our own species. That reason is Hope.
  • //begin quote
    Why is it we humans think that we can conquer every task that we put ourselves to? It makes no sense to me that we might be able to understand something that dolphins know. There are just some things that can't be learned.
    //end quote


    I ask this in all earnestness(sp?????)


    If i have never tried something, I already have failed by not trying.


    If I have never known the answer, I never have tried to answer it, or I haven't asked the right question.


    If however I have asked the question, I have tried, then at least I personally can feel better by knowing that I have an answer when someone asks me that question.


    Unless we have tried, no one will be able to know, no one will be able to start from that point on. The ultimate goal is to answer the question, to ask "What if?". And to answer it.


    This is IMNSHO, one of the best things we can learn. Dolphins are one of the smartest mammals/animals on the planet. I personally would be ashamed if everyone said what you just did. It isn't our/my say to tell our fellow humans what is and isn't worthwhile to do. Just because something seems impossible doesn't mean it is. Just because something seems illogical doesn't mean it is. I personally am glad that someone thinks out of the box, if no one did, we all would be in trouble.


    I just cant see how us quite possibly learning to communicate with another life form is not worthwhile. Imagine, if you will, the possiblilites, the gains if we do learn to communicate?


    We can learn the perspective of a TOTALLY different mindset. We could learn things never before possible, all by breaking one barrier, language. The possibilites are endless. Therefore we MUST try.


    I just can't personally fathom not to ask, What if? I don't believe there ISN'T anything I can't learn, because EVERYTHING can be learned. Period, the first step to failure is never to try.


    I leave you with this question, Imagine if Einstein, Newton, the Wright Brother's, Tesla, Edison, Sun Tzu, Kennedy, and many, many more, had come to your conclusion, and not tried? (another what if, ironically)

  • You wrote:

    "Intelligence isn't even an evolutionarily important characteristic: just look at how few species possess it -- if it were more valuable, then it would be selected for, and more species would have it. Which species do have it? Squids, spiders, and other predators. Intelligence has evolved at each stage in animal evolution (cephalopods, arachnids, mammalia, etc.) but only as a means of furthering predation. Where's the morality in that? "

    I take exception to this: There are examples of real intelligence that develops NOT to further predation, but to further self-defense and communal living. Rabbits are well known (both in folklore, and to anyone who has ever had a house rabbit) to posses an uncanny intelligence, awareness of the intentions of others, complex communication/body language, etc..., and I have yet to see a rabbit hunt another living being for food. This is simply too reductive a view of intelligence. Intelligence often evolves to promote cooperation, defense, and to make the most of available resources. There isn't much immoral about that in itself.

    (I suppose we could also discuss elephants, who have well-documented 'symbolic systems' built on low-frequency vocalization.)

  • Re:Just a suggestion (Score:3)

    by powerlord ( 28156 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @07:36AM (#403391) Journal
    For dolphins, the primary route to assimilate information is via sound.
    Perhaps they could use blind people.


    Somehow I don't think the "Seeing Eye Dolphin" would really catch on. What? You ment...

    Oh. Never Mind. ;)

  • If apes or dolphins had anything approaching a human-level ability at language, we'd observe them spontaneously using it

    We have. They do. Duh. Try to do at least the most basic amount of research before posting. We don't know how complex their language is because we don't understand it, but the fact that it is there is not under dispute.

  • Some people have already mentioned the parrot that can understand English. What they haven't made clear is just how sophisticated that parrot is.

    When shown a purple square block and a purple triangular block, and asked "What is the same?", the parrot will reply "color", and when asked "What is different?" the parrot will say "shape". Furthermore, they've gotten the parrot to start teaching another parrot to speak English. On one occasion, the "teacher" parrot even told the "student" to "speak more clearly" when he pronounced the word paper incorrectly.
  • It wouln't matter much. It's not just sound dolphins as well as most aquatic creatures can detect subltle changes in water pressure and electrical fields. Dolphins not only communicate using sound but also rely on posture, waves and who knows what else.

    Let's say that someone undertook a very worth cause and was able to simulate all the sensory input a dolphin receives and somehow translated it into some sort of sensory input a human understood. Do you think a human being could make sense out of it? Of course not.
    In order to communicate you need to have something in common with the creature. I am afraid a creature which only experiences air a minute fraction of it's life will find very little to communicate to you.
  • I failed to mention many things about the series. Book titles, for instance. I'm not reviewing it. :-)

    And as for the fleet, it's not known (at Startide Rising) whether it's really progenitor's or not (though it is certainly suspected so), and there are many species which are humanoid.

  • "Uplifting dolphins" reference (Score:3)

    by dcs ( 42578 ) on Sunday February 25, 2001 @10:27PM (#403401)
    This expression comes from the Uplift series, a couple of science fiction trilogies by David Brin. The central theme in the series is that no sentient species in the universe, except one fabled "progenitors", has ever attained sentience by itself. Instead, they all have been genetically engineered into sentience, a process known as "uplifting".

    Humans, naturally, uplift dolphins and chimpanzees (and then proceed to dogs, what a waste!).

    Mind you, I hated the first book, the second book is terribly annoying and it's story is continued (and finished) only in the fifth and sixth books. Third book is actually ok, but no dolphins there. :-)
  • I wonder if this will be like some of the attempts to speak with apes that turned out to be scientifically flawed and many of the results are due to wishful thinking on the part of the researchers. One example is the Koko uses American Sign Language which some words must be done at specific locations. Koko never did that so when some researchers were counting its vocabulary they would over count simple hand motions. People who often used sign language to communicate with others didn't understand what Koko was saying. Koko's communication was no more complex than the communication between smart dogs and preceptive masters.

    I wonder if this is going to be the same thing.

    A side note about cute dolphins: The US Parks department had a warning a few years ago because
    dolphins kill and attack more people in the US than sharks.

  • Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal (Score:3)

    by divec ( 48748 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @12:30AM (#403408) Homepage
    High intelligence is far rarer than almost any other animal characteristic. [...] From reading your post, I can't tell whether you're the sort who would cry for days upon rubbing your hands and inadvertently killing some bacteria, or the type who would gleefully kill monkeys for fun. In either case, I'm not impressed.

    Interesting. Reading between the lines, I take it that you think that intelligence is the important characteristic when deciding if killing is wrong.

    So what about the case when it's a human, but with very low intelligence and very low awareness? Say, less than the average chimp. Do you think it's worse to kill them than to kill a chimp? Just to make it easier, assume they do not have any [close] living relatives, so we're not talking about the amount the killing would upset other people.

    I believe most people would say "intelligence is the [main] deciding factor when considering if it is acceptable to cause an animal to suffer". But I think most of them would also say "It's wrong to kill a human, no matter how low their intelligence is".

  • AFAIK, all "language" is not made equal. For instance, elephants, dolphins, and apes all definately communicate in some manner, this stuff *is* hardwired...but it simply isn't the verbal "language" we are accustomed to. They're not teaching dolphins to speak English, they are just piggy backing on the dolphin's natural communication methods, to try to communicate with them. While it would be great (and perhaps impossible as you say) to teach animals human language, we can certainly at least try to communicate in the first place. That's all that's trying to be done. We're not sending these animals to Harvard for a literary degree.
  • nah.

    The ones they speak to will have been bred in captivity, and know nothing of the ocean (like the lost tribes of ulan-baata believe the world ends at the edge of the forest).

    However, if the language can be taught to some dolphins, AND if they prove capable of teaching it to their children (like some gorillas have), AND if the dolphins are released AND if we manage to find an n-th generation dolphin that still speaks a comprehensible dialect (you have to imagine that our choice of words to include in the language and our tenses and sentence structure are hardly going to be spot-on for life at sea) THEN we may learn something about dolphin culture.

    Hey, we could actually learn alot from how the language has evolved, even if it is no longer comprehensible. But in until then, insights into thought processes are "all" (pretty amazing even that, IMHO) we can hope for.
  • I can't believe that no one posted this... for chrissake:

    More crack reporting at The Onion: Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs. [theonion.com]
  • What makes us think that we can translate their language? All we're going to be doing is creating a Turing Machine. We would learn that "squeek-squah" should be met with a response of "boor-grap" or something. I remember reading once about a thought experiment where a person is inside a box with a language-response book. An experimenter would feed in Japanese characters, and the person inside would look up those characters and spit out a "response". Eventually, the person inside would get so good that they wouldn't need to look it up; they recognize it immediately. To the scientist outside, it looks like the box understands Japanese, but the person inside is just following the rules.

    Why is it we humans think that we can conquer every task that we put ourselves to? It makes no sense to me that we might be able to understand something that dolphins know. There are just some things that can't be learned.

    ------
    That's just the way it is

  • Is it crueler to kill a cockroach, or a baby chimp?

    Is it crueler to kill a catfish, or a cat?

    I think most would say the second in both cases, because we can recognize emotions in cats and chimps, but not in catfish or cockroaches (the second question is intentionally vaguer).

    When I read the Darwin awards, I really don't feel a damn thing about the deaths of people that stupid. When it's someone like Phil Hartman or Peter McWilliams dying, though, we've lost something.

    Imagine: a schoolbus goes off the cliff. All 15 children, two teachers, and the driver die. Would you rather it be a special ed class, or the speech and debate team? Most people can answer that question, though they feel bad about it.

    I have a very simple chain of what I think things are worth:

    bugs fish reptiles brain dead postmodern liberals birds mammals lawyers and politicians primates cute mammals stupid people dolphins normal people people I like women who I want to fuck family me.

    Everyone else out there has a similar scale. It probably isn't drastically different from mine. I really don't give a shit if some subspecies of wasp goes extinct, but I would care if Bonobos go extinct. Of course, I'd probably be less upset by some random murder or small car accident than about thousands of dolphins dying, so one level doesn't totally override another, but that's the general picture.

    If we can't value animals differently, then we have to say, the more the better, which means that all multicellular animals are bad. But that's just idiotic, so we must value things other than how many animals there are. Also, stupid animals will never survive the sun blowing up in 4 billion years. We might. They need to start learning how to communicate with us because they better get cracking on the ass kissing if they want us to take them with us.

    Of course, if I were a brainwashed postmodern liberal, I wouldn't be able to cope with the fact that my existence necessitates that some other animal doesn't exist, so I'd just go kill myself to make the world a better place.
  • The underwater touchscreen is the first of its kind. It's made up of an infrared beam grid mounted onto the tank window and a monitor screen that faces the dolphins. ...

    "The touchscreen is a kind of entertainment center for the dolphins," ...

    Remember the web-browser for the birds, literally, from the Slashdot story: The Internet For Parrots [slashdot.org] ? Now we have a touchscreen entertainment center for the dolphins.

    Things are getting out of hand. What's next? Using computer-controlled motors on arctic ice-blocks so penguins can play Tetris?

    Sig: My Latest Censorware Essay:
    What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [spectacle.org]

  • why do they live in igloos ?

    Why are they always getting caught in those fishing nets ?
  • Well, we're just lucky we have media to remember stuffs for us.

    Otherwise, we'd be pretty much like the chimps in this aspect...

    Wait. Maybe we can teach the chimp reading and writing too.
  • There is a slim possibility that the Dolphins are not only as smart as us - they are actually SMARTER than the researchers. They're just pretending to be dumb, and our smart scientists have been fooled all along.

    Of when one dolphin knows it's being studied, it spread the news to the whole dolphin community, making the "fool faking" behavior spread like wildfire.

    As a result, we humans as dumber animals than the dolphin will never be able to study its true behavior.
  • Arthur C Clarke wrote a novel about exactly this topic over thirty years ago. His book Dolphin Island [amazon.com] is based around a waterproof keyboard worn on the arm which emmits Dolphin whistles.

    Yet another device Clarke should have patented. First the geosynchronous comminucations satelite, now this. What's next, monoliths?
    --

  • I can think of a reason that we should be worried about dolphins before tuna, and that is that tuna breed much faster. There is more tuna, they're being replenished faster, and we're much less likely to drive them into extinction.

    That said, I agree--we shouldn't be looking at driving ANYTHING into extinction.

    The other thing is that we (well, many of us) have an urge to find proof of 'higher' intelligence. Not just the intelligence present in spiders, but intelligence on the level that we could carry on a discussion with. It's a fascinating concept to think of what we might (potentially) learn from something as 'alien' as a non-human (and in this case, ocean-going) life. I think a lot of us are looking for something to help us avoid killing ourselves off, and taking half the planet with us.


  • Yeah but to some extent, Koko has been a disappointment. Very quick learner, but they found that her (I think) intelligence was quite limited. No new insight or revelations on the human race.
    Also, dolphins live in a more disparate world. That looks intriguing.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday February 25, 2001 @06:39PM (#403445)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • That said, language without tool use is like writing a Perl script without an interpreter: it does nothing. Until dolphins can create their own tools, either through us really uplifting them or a la the oft quoted Onion article, we can't really consider them intelligent.

    Speaking as a former major in animal psych, this is an intensely parochial definition of intelligence. Are you saying that if you get talking with a dolphin and it can solve puzzles, beat you at chess, understand the microsoft case and help you with your love life* you won't consider it "intelligent" because they don't have the oppossable thumbs or (in most cases) any need for tool use? (If you are counting on tool use for your sense of superiority, you better not read anything on it. Unless you want to consider chickens smarter than dolphins) The presures and needs of their environment are entirely different than ours, so attempting to judge their true intellectual capacity by what we have done is just foolish.

    With any luck we will establish cominication and find that from their point of view the little toys we build are all cute and clever, but until they can help us learn to navigate the world by ultrasonic landmarks, they won't be able to "really consider us intelligent".

    *"ah, just get some of your buddies together and gang rape a shark. You'll feel better."

    Kahuna Burger

  • Whether is it good or bad, there are definite signs of an advanced intelligence. For example, humans are no longer constrained to certain environments; we can now take our environments with us. Dolphins still seem to exist within their environment.

    Is this a universal sign of intelligence, or an application of inteligence to a species specific desire? It is VERY tricky to judge levels of inteligence cross species, especially since humans always set themselves up at the top of the pile and look for tests to confirm their assumptions. (the history of animal intelligence testing is rife with examples of tests that were dismissed as "inaccurate" judgments of intelligence because they gave the "wrong" answer in where they ranked humans.)

    Its also important not to confuse cultural accomplishments with signs of species level inteligence. There is little reason to believe that our biological ability to reason has evolved significantly since the stone age, and no reason to imagine that a "tribe" of modern children raised without the cultural buildup of knowlege would progress in their lifetimes to even a bronze age level of technology (silly Ayn Rand stories aside). Don't let a lucky choice of your number and kind of ancestors lull you into a false sense of superiority.

    Taking our environment with us is one way in which humans have applied their intelligence. I'd never rank it as an acid test that could be applied to another species unless we knew A LOT more about its psychology. Experimental/cognitive psychologists will make a judgement they have been training and studying to make, and the rest of us will say "oh".

    Kahuna Burger

  • Besides, who says dolphins don't make tools - or at least toys?

    From my tour of the Living Seas (Epcot, research, not training, 1997) I also recal some of the researchers describing situations where the dolphins would use tools if they were in a situation where the materials were present and needed. The whole tool thing is a little bit of a red herring since a dolphins natural habitat is a tool poor environment, while homonids evolved in a tool rich environment. (early tools were found objects that could be thrown or used to extend reach, modifying and actually producing tools came later.) From a research paper I did several years ago on tool use, I don't recal any purely ocean dwelling animals* that used tools, while many "low intelligence" land animals did. Hence my opinion that spontaneous tool use as a intelligence criterion is parochial.

    I liked your link, BTW. I suspect that dolphins are one step better than merely inteligent and will be found to be artistic (song, etc). Sigh, if only I'd stuck with the PhD program...

    *shore dwellers like sea otters had tool use, but there are comfortable on land as well as in the water.

    Kahuna Burger

  • ....if they used bells as well.

    But really, we are simply talking about conditioning, not communicating here. This is no more then a wet version of Pavlov's experiments with his dog.

  • What's next, monoliths?

    Just in case you missed it, and weren't actually being sarcastic there, exhibit A [slashdot.org] and exhibit B [slashdot.org]. Arthur Clarke, a Nostradamus For The Twenty-Fifth Century. Be afraid =)

  • Groundbreaking Research (Score:5)

    by Eloquence ( 144160 ) on Sunday February 25, 2001 @06:55PM (#403465)
    This kind of research on animal intelligence is indeed groundbreaking, and is opposed from many sides who believe that animals cannot really communicate with humans, and any signs of communication are really just imitation. It's like with SETI: Trying to get people to finance a project where you tell them you want to talk to chimpanzees, or dolphins, or parrots (some interesting experiments there, too) is similar to requesting grants for funding a nanotechnological molecular assembler that circulates in your blood and destroys viruses..

    This despite the fact that many of these projects have produced astonishing results. I was especially fascinated by the work of Dr. Roger Fouts and his colleagues, who have tried to teach the American Sign Language to chimpanzees -- and succeeded. Not only did the chimps communicate with them over food and life in general, they also taught the sign language to their children. And more precise than you might imagine: Instructions like "Tickle me, then bring me one of those bananas. Oh, and I would like to watch some TV" are not at all uncommon ;-)

    Find more info at their Institute [cwu.edu], I especially recommend the book "Next to Kin". I really wish such projects could be funded through micropayments. If every Slashdot reader donated a dollar to this research, they'd be much farther than they are now.

    --

  • Try The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker. (Great book; should be on everybody's reading list. However, I can't give you an exact page because my friend stole it.) If you do some reasearch, you'll find that although she did seem to learn some things, many of their more impressive "results" were the result of wishful thinking rather than actually learning things.

    Yes, the chimps learned to tell them that they were hungry. However, a dog can do that just as well, and nobody claims that they're actually using language. Communicating a concept such as "I'm hungry," "I want that toy," or "Tickle me" is a long way from actual language or conversation.

  • Right now, all they can do is get dolphins to reproduce some of the introduced whistles...there's no communication, or transfer of information between humans and dolphins. This kind of thing has been tried before, and hasn't gone anywhere.

    Also it's documented that dolphins communicate just as much through whistles as they do through movement.

    While a simplified signing language has worked with an ape, remember that apes communicate similarily to humans; dolphins do not...

  • On the other hand, speaking as a Hawai'i boy who has, in his life, pulled a reasonable number of ahi and akule out of the water (mmm... good eating!), and who has a reasonable familiarity with their internals, I have to say there is a point to the nerve complexity angle. Not much there in the ahi skull... and those are some of the big, and relatively clever, tunas. clever in the sense of put up a good fight... survival instincts.

    I've never met a cognizant fish. Yes, I value conciousness, in some degree, at least, much more highly than respiration, much less cell division. Yes, I'd place a marginally self aware computer higher on the deserves-consideration-for-not-being-killed scale than an essentially automated organic. No, I don't consider killing individuals with self awareness inherently immoral. Someone who intends to kill me, and cannot be dissuaded by other means, dies. Someone who kills, or deliberately hurts or tortures someone I care about, or who is obviously willing to kill with malice without reason of defense or fear, dies. I find this in no way ethically reprehensible. Killing self aware, nearly sentient life forms for no better reason than a few dollars in profit and a cheaper can of tuna, I think, falls into the reprehensible category.
  • Envision this:
    A small wearable computer designed to be worn on a diver's back. Unit could either fit under a wet/dry suit or attached to the SCUBA gear.

    Unit has input and output devices for humans and dolphins:
    Human input: Microphone (will require specially adapted head unit)
    Human output: Earphones
    Dolphin input: hydrophones
    Dolphin output: underwater speakers

    Human to dolphin communication:
    Human speaks into microphone -> Speech recognition software processes input into intermediate symbols -> dolphin interface software takes intermediate symbols, translate into squeaks, whistles, pops, etc. -> output is feed to the underwater speakers -> Dolphin hears, and hopefully understands!

    Dolphin to human will be by a similar process, with the input from the hydrophones and the output going to the earphones.

    Issue to workout:
    Dolphin software will obviously take the most work. Do dolphin speak via a standarized language? Does each pod have it's own dialect? Is the language regular or irregular? Context based or context free? In addition, software updates need to be worked out, ultimately leading to processes that learn new dialects or phrases in real-world use.

    Hardware needs to be small, sturdy, waterproof, have enough power to last the time of a dive. Should have sufficient processor power and memory to support translations in at least near-real time.
  • I've considered this question at length, and have finally developed a system to determine which animals I can or cannot kill:

    Unique data content.

    Ants are perfect genetic copies of each other; their brains can only carry a few bytes of unique data at a time. I can kill ants with impunity.

    Cows are genetically distinct (containing more than a few megabytes of distinct data), but their brains are virtually identical. I wouldn't go on a mad cow-slaughtering spree, but I wouldn't necessarily feel guilty about eating a cheeseburger on a fresh, thick kaiser roll.

    Apes? Dolphins? African Grey Parrots? Dogs? Octopi? To all appearances, these animals possess not only unique genetic data, but also a certain amount of reasoning ability and memory. As they contain unique psychic data, I'd definitely have some qualms about killing them for any reason. In fact, I might go so far as to suggest that apes, dolphins, and African Greys be treated as almost human -- we don't really know how smart they are, and until we know, we should be treating them well.

    Which brings us to people. People contain BIGNUM amounts of unique data apart from their genetic data. People are far more important than ants, bacteria, and even dogs. All effort should be expended to keep them alive and kicking.
  • no evidence that the dolphins can understand it at all. Like parrots.

    Actually, at least one parrot can understand human speech and answer questions. You show him something red and wood, and ask what color it is, he answers (red) or what it's made of, and he answers 'wood'. He is not just 'Clever Hans'ing it.

    See the previous discussion on Slashdot [slashdot.org] and other links such as the Alex project home page [cages.org].

  • The scene: a bunch of men hovering over a screen in a scene stolen straight out of Sphere, as dolphin circles in the ocean outside the window.

    Humans: Greetings, we come in peace.

    Dolphin: All your base are belong to us.

  • 10 bucks says the first message we receive from a dolphin is "stop leaving warm spots in the water".
  • Cognitive ability is not dependant on technology. Technology is dependant on intelligence, but also on resources and physical manipulation. Dolphins, without those crucial opposable thumbs, aren't all that good at manipulating objects. Their social interactions and language (what little we can figure out from it, anyway) seem to indicate that they are quite intelligent, even if they can't make and use tools.

    I wonder if they have developed any understanding of mathematics, beyond simple counting. Math is fairly abstract, so it probably wouldn't suffer as much in translation as other ideas which are grounded in either species' primary means of perception.

  • From the article:

    Marten, who has been working with three dolphins at the park, says the dolphins already recognize and repeat the artificial whistles he has devised.

    However, they have yet to relate the whistles to the objects they refer to -- this will be the next goal of the research. "The second stage is to see if the dolphins recognize what the whistles stand for..."

    And then they claim that:

    "We'll be able to ask questions and they will be able to answer in very simple terms."

    All they have so far are dolphins mimicking sounds- no evidence that the dolphins can understand it at all. Like parrots.

    Seems vaporous to me. Or maybe I'm just cynical.

  • What will they find... (Score:5)

    by Daemosthenes ( 199490 ) on Sunday February 25, 2001 @06:34PM (#403497)
    I predict the first message will read something like this...

    "So long, and thanks for all the fish."

    Sorry, I just couldn't resist it.


    47.5% Slashdot Pure(52.5% Corrupt)
  • [click][whistle][click][pop]

    Translation: Douglas Adams is a twit! [ridiculopathy.com]

  • Why send email? Why post things on slashdot? Why put a premium on intelligent animals?

    Because: most human beings like to communicate with other sentient beings. It's satisfying. Even having a horse or dog is nice if you're out on the trail for weeks w/o human company. I just spent 5 mere days traveling w/o really speaking more than a few sentences to anybody, and I was soooo glad to get home to where I could talk to somebody.

    Intelligent animals are held in high regard because the level of interaction and communication can be higher, and most humans value this. Not to mention, of course, the mystery of what something that really is different from us could tell us if we knew how to talk with them.

    --
  • In other words, there just isn't very much information that can be extracted (in an information-theory sense) from dolphin sonic signals, regardless of what those signals mean. It's as if we can see that they have (e.g.) a 6 word vocabulary, and never use more than 4 words in a sentence, and never speak in paragraphs. No matter what they're saying, that would limit them to communicating no more than 24 thoughts total -- period.

    Hmmmm. I realize this is nitpicking -- since languages are almost never so effecient as to make use of a different meaning for every possible symbol/bit (though, in context, they're effecient enough to apply multiple meanings to the same symbol). But...

    6 symbols and 4 slots would actually give you
    6*6*6*6 = 1296 possibilities. Even puting a "no duplicate word" rule in would give you 360 different possibilities.



    --

  • Re:Groundbreaking Research (Score:5)

    by Cyclopatra ( 230231 ) on Sunday February 25, 2001 @07:21PM (#403519)
    If every Slashdot reader donated a dollar to this research, they'd be much farther than they are now.

    Well, you can make a donation online here [earthtrust.org]. And the project's webpage is here [earthtrust.org] for more info and pictures of cute dolphins :P

    I gave 'em 25$. Anybody else find that they donate a lot more as a result of reading /. ? Maybe it's a second /. effect...your website gets hammered, but your donations skyrocket...

    Cyclopatra


    "We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore

  • Just a suggestion (Score:5)

    by ishrat ( 235467 ) on Sunday February 25, 2001 @06:46PM (#403521) Homepage
    "My hesitation is that dolphins are primarily acoustic animals while humans are primarily visual animals. In humans, the most-used sense is vision; we use it to process data." "For dolphins, the primary route to assimilate information is via sound.

    Perhaps they could use blind people.

  • Except for one item: "...if [intelligence] were more valuable, then it would be selected for, and more species would have it."

    Actually, a few days ago I argued a similar position, but I'm not so sure I was right. Let me try the opposite stance here and see what happens.

    Every species exploits at least one ecological "niche". For instance, trees use sunlight. But the existence of trees creates a new niche--tree bark. So there evolved insects to eat the tree bark. This creates a new niche: tree-bark eating insects. So we get woodpeckers. Then there are bird droppings on the ground so we get dung-beetles. Etc.

    Once there is a significant amount of relatively intelligent life (lions, elephants, etc) there is a new niche based on out-thinking. We are able to eat buffaloes, etc because we are able to outthink them. We've also outthought grass (aka grains) by planting it in large patches, removing competition (weeds) and then harvesting in big truck loads.

    Now we get to the crux of my point: Is there any more room in our niche? At the beginning (several million years ago) there may have been more than one semi-intelligent mostly-ape. But since part of our nature seems to be warfare, they've been wiped out. Then our numbers exploded to the point where our niche is almost OVER-populated--there's no selection pressure for other animals to take advantage because there's little or no surplus "out-thinking" for them to take advantage OF. Thus, no other intelligent animals.
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  • "Also, consider the fact that not every individual is fit for the stubborn teacher-role."

    For humans, "teaching" language is not a necessity. Consider: EVERY child brought up (in non-pathological conditions, c.f. "Genie") learns language. It doesn't matter what kind of teacher the child's parent is, the child WILL acquire language. Whereas with chimps, it takes skilled trainers many years to get a chimp to use even 50-100 signs.

    If you've ever raised children, the above is very clear to you. I have a two-year old who is learning words faster than I can keep up. In fact, he's learning language faster than HE can keep up. He knows and says more words than he can fit into his limited ability to articulate syllables. Thus, "bay bay" can be "basement" or "baby". And just in the last month or two he's started making two (and sometimes three) word "sentences" ("Fix light", "Evan basement", "Read book", etc). I will admit to having explicitly taught him a few individual words ("drill", "toothbrush", etc) but the rest of the vocabular and ALL of the grammar he's done on his own.

    The question isn't: "do apes/chimps find language useful"--there are obvious uses for language for ANY animal. The question is: "are apes/chimps CAPABLE of learning language" (as opposed to mimicked signing).


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  • "For instance, elephants, dolphins, and apes all definately communicate in some manner, this stuff *is* hardwired...but it simply isn't the verbal "language" we are accustomed to. They're not teaching dolphins to speak English, they are just piggy backing on the dolphin's natural communication methods, to try to communicate with them."

    You seem to have a very impoverished view of human language. Fish in water, no doubt.

    Language is more than vocabulary. There are rules for creating words: Darwin. Darwin-ian. Darwin-ism. Even simpler: One wug, two wugs. There are rules for displaying meaning through grammar: "Dog bites man." vs "Man bites dog." Recursiveness: Darwin-ian-ism-s. "Do you think that the person who dumped the bucket could be the brother of Mary who chipped his tooth?"

    Delve deeper into English (or look superficially at some other languages) and you'll find even more interesting items.

    Compare that to an ape screech indicating (maybe) "Danger!"
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  • I would define both autism and hearing disorders as "pathological". But even deaf children learn language--when in the company of OTHER deaf people.

    I have no idea about your three year old because 1) you give no data and 2) I'm not a child language development expert.
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  • "That apes and dolphins are capable of using language is not in question. "

    Yes, it is. I know of no scientific study that shows that apes OR dolphins "understand" more than simple words ("ball" "round" "go" etc). Can you give pointers to scientists (not animal trainers like Koko's Penny Marshall) who have published controlled studies (not anecdotal, "I swear the cat knows what I'm saying" evidence) in peer-reviewed journals (not Time magazine)?


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  • Re:Groundbreaking Research (Score:3)

    by OlympicSponsor ( 236309 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @03:22AM (#403527)
    "...teach the American Sign Language to chimpanzees -- and succeeded. Not only did the chimps communicate with them over food and life in general, they also taught the sign language to their children. And more precise than you might imagine: Instructions like "Tickle me, then bring me one of those bananas. Oh, and I would like to watch some TV" are not at all uncommon."

    When did this research take place? I just finished (re-)reading "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker and he had a pretty scathing review of "ape language" research (although clearly he only covered stuff up to the publication date of the book). To pick an example at random, there was one team that was teaching sign language to chimps. The team members were supposed to write down every time the chimp made a sign. The only deaf, ASL-"native" team member wrote down FAR fewer signs. He eventually complained or quit or wrote a book or something. He said the other team members were recording that the chimp was signing "banana" when he pointed at a banana and signing "TV" when pointing at a TV. He also mentioned that the apes didn't direct the signs at people the way we do with language. That kind of indicates it wasn't so much directed communication as trained behavior.

    As for the precise examples: I seriously doubt it. Even Koko (whose trainer, Penny Marshall verges on the religious [i.e. "willing to lie"] regarding her ape's abilities) only signs things like "water bird" and "glasses Koko".

    As an aside, I see the title of the book is "Next of Kin". Presumably this is supposed to be evocative of some kind of reasoning like this: "Apes are the closest relatives of humans, therefore they can probably talk good, too". Fallacy alert! What if a disease had wiped out all the apes 1000 years ago, leaving, say, lemurs as our closest living relatives? Would lemurs then be expected to be able to talk? Or what if we discovered a group of Neanderthals living in the mountains (Yeti, Sasquatch, etc)? Could we then drop apes from our experiments because as more distant relatives they clearly won't be able to talk? "Closest living relative" has no biological implications--it's simply a historical accident.
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  • Does no one here have respect for language? (Score:5)

    by OlympicSponsor ( 236309 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @05:15AM (#403528)
    I'm no Luddite, I'd love to be able to talk to dolphins and/or apes...but you can't teach language to apes and dolphins. Language isn't just a matter of brute processing power of the brain. It requires innate wiring created to handle it. Consider cases of otherwise intelligent people who because of stroke, disease, injury, genetic impairment, etc are unable to process language. Conversely, think of disorders where the subject is able to converse on quite a sophisticated level but has an IQ of around 50.

    If apes or dolphins had anything approaching a human-level ability at language, we'd observe them spontaneously using it. Check out "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker for more info on this topic.
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  • In a related story... (Score:5)

    by iomud ( 241310 ) on Sunday February 25, 2001 @08:48PM (#403530) Homepage Journal
    The same technique was used to attempt to communicate with John Carmack of id Software

    Johns remarks:
    Vertex programs aren't invariant with the fixed function geometry paths. That means that you can't mix vertex program passes with normal passes in a multipass algorithm. This is annoying, and shouldn't have happened.

    In light of these statements the efforts were seen as a failure, we may never know if anyone will ever understand Carmack.
  • Scientists are attempting to begin conversation with patent lawyers through a series of "duh" "dur" "hyuck" and "golly"'s. While they admit that there is no hope for intelligent reponses, their goal is to debunk the myth that patent lawyers are completely unintelligent. Good luck with that one, O Brave Scientists.

  • what are we doing?! (Score:3)

    by HaiLHaiL ( 250648 ) on Sunday February 25, 2001 @06:41PM (#403532) Homepage
    dear god, don't these people read the onion [theonion.com]?!
  • What is wrong with use-value as a measurement of worth? Why should we support the perspective that every animal has value?

    Surely, every species plays a role in the ecosystem. That's not to say that that role should outweigh the potential human benefit that could come from taking an action that might threaten a member of a species.

    For example, if we were to let up a little bit on the regulations that retard the growth of power plants in california we would not be seeing the potential explosion in consumer costs and direct heating costs. Who is to say that the benefit of cleaner air is not worth less to the actual citizenry than the benefit of cheaper power?

    Let them decide, not your ideology.

  • So what about the case when it's a human, but with very low intelligence and very low awareness? Say, less than the average chimp. Do you think it's worse to kill them than to kill a chimp? Just to make it easier, assume they do not have any [close] living relatives, so we're not talking about the amount the killing would upset other people.
    I believe most people would say "intelligence is the [main] deciding factor when considering if it is acceptable to cause an animal to suffer". But I think most of them would also say "It's wrong to kill a human, no matter how low their intelligence is".

    Well, first of all, killing and inducing suffering are two very different things. Let's think of the ramifications of each:

    Killing:

    • A being, together with its memories and experiences, ceases to exist. The continuity and lessons of these are lost.
    • Whatever that being had the potential to achieve, will not be acheived.
    • Other beings that care for this being will suffer sadness.
    • Other similar beings, assuming they're smart enough, will develop an aversion to you or to beings like you.
    • That being's genes are lost from the pool unless it has already reproduced.

    Causing suffering:

    • A being experiences sensations that its brain tells it are damaging and should be avoided.
    • The being experiences the frustration of being unable to avoid those sensations.
    • That being and perhaps other similar beings, assuming they're smart enough, will develop an aversion to you or to beings like you.

    Which of these outcomes is tolerable under various circumstances depends very much on the being in question.

    If someone/something has a brain deficiency or natural lack of capacity which makes it impossible for them to experience pain, then it's not particularly horrible to poke them with sharp needles (as long as they're clean, I guess).

    Most of the time, however, I think it's the other way around. Hence the tradition of humanely terminating animals that are so wounded they're in extreme pain and will never walk again.

    Putting it all together, based on the ramifications itemized above, I think that as intelligence rises, killing the being becomes increasingly "more worse" than causing it to suffer. Both are bad, of course, bu they're not the same.

  • If any animal has worth, then they all have worth. If we're squeamish about killing any one kind of animal (a "higher-order" "intelligent" animal), then we should be squeamish about killing all animals, since intelligence is just another characteristic and not a particularly important one at that.

    I'd hope that once we get things worked out with the dolphins, they display more sophisticated reasoning ability than that. Why exactly aren't dolphins more important than other animals? Because they are more intelligent, and that's nothing special. Why isn't it special? Because it just isn't. I see.

    High intelligence is far rarer than almost any other animal characteristic. It represents the fruits of more evolution, and in studying it we see the reflections of more complex processes and detailed natural history than in simpler traits.

    From reading your post, I can't tell whether you're the sort who would cry for days upon rubbing your hands and inadvertently killing some bacteria, or the type who would gleefully kill monkeys for fun. Both possibilities flow from your argument. In either case, I'm not impressed.

  • Re:Your last comment is untrue (Score:4)

    by raju1kabir ( 251972 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @12:28AM (#403536) Homepage
    Try The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker. (Great book; should be on everybody's reading list. However, I can't give you an exact page because my friend stole it.)

    Pinker's critical evaluation of Koko begins in earnest on p. 337 (I've assiduously hunted down my copy whenever it's left my hands for too long).

    To begin with, the apes did
    not "learn American sign language." This preposterous claim is based on the myth that ASL is a crude system of pantomimes and gestures rather than a full language with comples phonology, morphology, and syntax. In fact the apes had not learned any true ASL signs. The one deaf signer on the Washoe team later made these candid remarks:
    "Every time the chimp made a sign, we were supposed to write it down in the log... They were always complaining because my log didn't show enough signs. All the hearing people turned in logs with long lists of signs. They always saw more signs than I did... I watched really carefully. The chimp's hands were moving constantly. Maybe I missed something, but I don't think so. I just wasn't seeing any signs. The hearing people were logging every movement the chimp made as a sign. Every time the chimp put his finger in his mouth, they'd say 'Oh, he's making the sign for
    drink,' and they'd give him some milk... When the chimp scratched itself, they'd record it as the sign for scratch... When [the chimps] want something, they'd reach. Sometimes [the trainers would] say, "Oh, amazing, look at that, it's exactly like the ASL sign for give!" It wasn't."

    Now, it's also possible that this native signer was excessively picky about ASL; in high school language classes, for instance, students can understand each other saying stuff that no native speaker of the language in question would ever be able to puzzle out. But it seems more likely that what was reported is true; the apes were just being apes and the researchers were biased in favor of positive results.

  • Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animals? (Score:5)

    by Chuck Flynn ( 265247 ) on Sunday February 25, 2001 @06:52PM (#403539)
    Why are humans so preoccupied with intelligence as a measure of species worth? Because we're narcissistic to think that we possess it as a defining characteristic and that therefore other animals are valuable in so far as they approximate our own species?

    Intelligence isn't even an evolutionarily important characteristic: just look at how few species possess it -- if it were more valuable, then it would be selected for, and more species would have it. Which species do have it? Squids, spiders, and other predators. Intelligence has evolved at each stage in animal evolution (cephalopods, arachnids, mammalia, etc.) but only as a means of furthering predation. Where's the morality in that?

    If any animal has worth, then they all have worth. If we're squeamish about killing any one kind of animal (a "higher-order" "intelligent" animal), then we should be squeamish about killing all animals, since intelligence is just another characteristic and not a particularly important one at that. This absurdity is well illustrated by the author's final point:
    The ultimate goal of Marten's research is to illustrate to the world the high intelligence of dolphins and the need to protect the species.

    "Dolphins are being killed by the millions so we can get our tuna. It's like what people used to say about the American buffalo -- 'Gee there used to be buffalo up on those hills.' The same will be true of the dolphins if we do not act," Marten said.
    It's been said before, but it needs repeating: what about the tuna? Why worry about killing all those dolphins when we're so intent on killing the damn tuna? If you cut tuna, do they not bleed?

    I can only think of one really good reason why we should be studying dolphin communication and that's so we can learn from their experience with other sea creatures. We've been to the moon and back, but there are parts of our own ocean that we've never explored, depths we've never plumbed. If we could communicate with dolphins and ask them what they've seen of our aquatic universe, then maybe we'd know a lot more about what goes on beneath the surfaces of our placid lagoons. Dolphins provide a perfect solution to the dangers and expenses of manned and unmanned submarine exploration -- let's not reinvent the wheel by reinventing the dolphin.

  • Interesting. But what about pigs? Did you know that pigs are just as smart if not smarter than dogs?

    Yeah, but a dog's got personality, and personality goes a long way. We'd have to be talking about one charming motherfucking pig.

  • You know, if they could get the dolphins to respond to say, multi-tone whistling at a very high rate, maybe they could hit something like 300-1200 baud ... think about it. :-)

  • navy dolphins (Score:3)

    by cmmwhodi ( 312676 ) on Sunday February 25, 2001 @07:49PM (#403548)
    the navy and dolphins issue is also very interesting, a good summary can be found here [pbs.org].
  • Why are they bothering to use these under-water monitors to test dolphins abilities in simple audio-visual games. Let's cut to the chase, make Bash operable by jabbing of the monitor with the nose and high-pitched squeeking alone, and see if these dolphins' are really as 1337 as marine biologists claim their neurological ski11z enable them to be.

    Someday, my friends, you will by H4X3D by a dolphin.

  • Are we alone? (Score:3)

    by qpt ( 319020 ) on Sunday February 25, 2001 @06:37PM (#403556)
    For years, both scientists and fiction writers have assumed that contact with an intelligent species would come from the stars. Perhaps they've been wrong all along.

    Test given to dolphins indicate a high degree of both spatial and linguistic intelligence - a combination that was once thought to be the exclusive domain of human beings. Further, dolphins demonstrate highly structured social orders, and variations in culture between dolphins from different geographical regions.

    A common language has the potential to finally force mankind to stop treating the earth as its own, and realize that we share it with many other creatures - some perhaps as advanced as we are.

    - qpt
  • How is this different to training a cat to respond to a "dinner call" by banging a teaspoon on a tin. It's pretty simple really... There is a thing called "homeostasis". Good things get rewarded.. thou must strive after these. Bad things you will get punished for... avoid these at all costs. I don't see what ground-breaking revolution has been discovered here.....

  • Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal (Score:3)

    by american goon ( 319935 ) on Sunday February 25, 2001 @07:50PM (#403559)
    It's been said before, but it needs repeating: what about the tuna? Why worry about killing all those dolphins when we're so intent on killing the damn tuna? If you cut tuna, do they not bleed?
    As a matter of fact, if you cut a tuna, it will not bleed. This is because tuna do not have blood.
    Dolphins, on the other hand, will bleed if cut. Dolphins evolved from land-based mammals, which needed blood to emulate the salt water of the fish from which they evolved.
    In other words, fish are barely plants in terms of their evolutionary development, and if you need some deeper, "more essential" quality to babble over in your pot-soaked hippie philosophical non-discussions then try thinking about how likely some creature with so little sensory perception available to it and so little processing power to back it up could possibly have a consciousness connected to it.
    If you want to whine about how killing dolphins might be no worse than killing tuna then you might argue that cutting the grass when you mow your lawn is a horrible atrocity. And, you could continue that cutting grass is like killing people. Grass doesn't bleed when you cut it, either.

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