I went to the science museum as a kid and saw an exhibit about brain size. They had a roach brain sitting on a pin head. The mouse brain was tiny. A cat's brain looked like a chewed piece of gum. The dog's brain looked like a pair of plums and the chimp brain was the size of your fist. Now this is the crazy part, the dolphin brain and the human brain are about the same size. Up to this point, the size of the animal, the intelligence of that animal and the size of the animal's brain seemed relative, even as kid this intrigued me. It made me think.
"If a dolphin's brain is the same size as ours, is it as smart as as we are?"
Well, obviously not. Dolphins are silly. Maybe if dolphins had language, history, or had tools , maybe they could used their big brains to understand the things we think about. I saw an interaction between a dolphin and a diver once that was pretty interesting. The diver had a recording of dolphin squeaks that he played for a dolphin in the ocean. The dolphin heard the squeaks and responded like he would to another dolphin. The diver couldn't carry on the conversation because he only had the one recording. The dolphin realized that he wasn't being spoken to, and the diver was just imitating dolphins. So the dolphin in response went from his horizontal swimming position to a upright vertical stance to imitate the diver. It really seemed like the dolphin was trying as hard as the diver to come to an understanding.
Forget about dolphins. A killer whale's brain is a little bigger than ours and a sperm whale's brain weighs 18 pounds. Is brain size is a reflection of intelligence? If you think you know the answer to that question, think about this.
"If whales were highly intelligent, would they interact with humans."
Look at it from the whale's perspective. It's hard because the sea is a whole other world. It could be heaven. Swimming is just like flying in the water. the sea provides food and shelter. They grow to be titans and the whole planet is there playground. Life as a whale could be the highest form of existence on the planet and we wouldn't know it, because our brains are too small. I was flipping through a book about whales at the library, when I got the last chapter, it was about whaling, it was terrible. Whalers would shoot a whale with a harpoon to injury it. Then the whale's pod(family) would come to help him, the whales push him up to the surface to help him breath, then the whalers would slaughters them all. It was a little upsetting.
With that big giant brain and that loud voice, It's possible one of those song we hear whales singing is saying " stay away from those goddamn humans, they've got harpoooooons!!"
We can't effectively communicate with other humans half the time. If a guy speaks a different language, lives on a different street or gets his god from a different book - people start fighting. Right now we think we can't communicate with whales because they are not smart enough to respond to us. Whales could be thinking the same thing.
I'm not saying whales are better than us. I'm all about equality. I just wonder what that animal is thinking about with that giant brain. Whales may know things about life and the earth we could never understand. Could the intelligence of whales be something we have yet to discover?
Hotswat
