The latest example: On May 17 in India, the Ministry of Environment and Forests
to all Indian states banning dolphin amusement parks. No leaping out of
pools to catch balls, no jumping through hoops. Forcing dolphins to
entertain humans, the ministry said, was morally unacceptable.
"Cetaceans
[dolphins, whales and porpoises] in general are highly intelligent and
sensitive," the Ministry said, "and various scientists who have
researched dolphin behavior have suggested that [they have] unusually
high intelligence ... compared to other animals."
This means,
the Indian ministry went on: "that dolphins should be seen as 'non-human
persons' and as such should have their own specific rights."
"Non-human persons" — what a pregnant phrase! People-like, but not like people.
India's putting dolphins (and the other cetaceans) into a new
legal category that classifies them as beings nearer to ourselves, with
an emotional life that, if we could talk to them, or listen in to
whatever they're saying, we might find familiar. I'm thinking of the
famous
New Yorker cartoon that shows two dolphins swimming
side-by-side, where one of them says to another, "If I could do only one
thing before I died, it would be to swim with a middle aged couple from
Connecticut." (Which you can .)
You may giggle, but the joke
hurts. Big-brained animals almost certainly wouldn't want to spend years
lugging polyester-skinned mammals across shallow swimming pools six
days a week, or juggling colorful balls with their rostrums (noses).
Their brains suggest they've got better things to do. What, we're not
sure. All we know is, being a dolphin has to be a very different from
being a person, an experience we can only guess at.
And yet, because of those brains, it's hard not to slip into
thinking of them as if they were variants of us. This happened to me,
instantly, last year, when I read that the U.S. Navy had decided to
"retire" a group of mine-detecting dolphins, replacing them with robots.
Twenty-four dolphins, after years of service, were being "reassigned," ,
so that sea drones, or unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs, in Navy
parlance) could take their place. The Navy had its reasons. The robots
didn't need constant feeding, medical attention, cages and rest. They
didn't need seven years of training. Robots could do the job on day one
for less — much less. So the dolphins got sacked.
And I thought,
what?
And, instantly, each of those dolphins became a Norma Rae, fists
(fins?) clenched, crying "UNFAIR!" After giving their whole careers to
the Navy, sniffing for underwater mines to protect our ships and
harbors, this is the thanks they get? That, of course, was
my mind shouting; what the dolphins were thinking, if they even noticed the change, is anybody's guess.
Which is the puzzle. The deep puzzle.
I can understand
why an animal that looks like us, a gorilla or an orangutan, with their
familiar faces and gestures would get our attention and respect. But
dolphins don't blink like we do, don't gaze thoughtfully or frown
(ever). Their faces are like masks, and yet, because an organ hidden in
their heads, because their brain resembles ours in size, we ignore their
different shape, their different habitat, their alien-ness, and we
embrace them as "non-human persons."
To be fair, their brains
are big. Lori Marino, a dolphin expert at Emory University,
that dolphin brains are about "five times larger for their body size
when compared to another animal of similar size," meaning their brains
are almost as disproportionately large as ours. We are seven times the
norm. "Not a huge difference," she says.
The part of the brain
dedicated to abstract thinking, the neocortex, in a dolphin brain is
"more highly convoluted than our own," she said, and it is her opinion
that dolphins are capable of complex, subtle thinking. You don't have a
brain like that for no reason.
We Haven't Cracked The Code
So
what's the reason? Dolphin scientists assume these animals are very
social and communicate constantly, and the brains they have are designed
to manage all that inter-dolphin messaging. As to what they're talking
about — we haven't cracked the code. But because we, the other big
brained species, have used our brains to organize armies, to re-design
landscapes, to invade the sky, to dominate all the continents and to
wipe out almost all the other large animals, we may have the faint
suspicion that if they choose, dolphins could do likewise. It's a
possibility that we can't completely dismiss. We just don't know.
Well
— that's not right. One of us knows. The late and very lamented British
writer, satirist, and wildlife explorer Doug Adams, in
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
explained that "on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was
more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the
wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done
was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the
dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than
man — for precisely the same reasons."
Maybe that's why they
fascinate us. What if, after tens of thousands of years conquering and
murdering and dominating, it turns out that leaping, diving and mucking
around in the water is what the
real smarties do?
