Is there intelligent life on Earth?

non-fiction essay

For instance, 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. -- Douglas Adams

When I'm going to talk about dolphins, and specifically whether or not they are intelligent, I start to wonder what exactly I mean by intelligent. For example, dolphins have never invented fire or tools. This is more or less obvious because they live in water, and have no hands, let alone opposable thumbs. Thus, some people who are interested in making contact -- with aliens that is -- don't really care much about dolphins. After all, they have no technology and thus will never achieve space travel. They don't look much like the archetypical alien that SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) folks hope to find.

I wonder if indeed that's true. I don't mean whether dolphins can somehow use mind-control beams to float into space. There doesn't seem to be any evidence of that. Rather I wonder if the SETI folks are wrong, if there's more to intelligence than manipulating tools and building radios and spaceships. Unfortunately, the answer isn't forthcoming.

The belief that dolphins are intelligent is widespread and ancient. Ancient sailors used to believe that dolphins would lead lost ships to land ... many people still believe this today.

But there's also scientific evidence to consider. Dolphins are one of the few animals to recognize themselves in a mirror. This is widely considered to be a test to self-awareness; in other words, I think therefore I am. Or perhaps I swim therefore I am. Dolphins thus join chimps and elephants, two other animals thought to be highly intelligent. Dolphins also have bigger brains than we do. Alone, this fact means nothing, since our ancestors the Neandertals also had bigger brains, but were undoubtedly stupider than us, as demonstrated by the fact that they aren't around any more, and we are.

Dolphins have incredibly complex sonic abilities. They have four separate organs that can generate sound. They navigate mostly through sonar, and communicate through clicks, buzzes and tones up to 200 KHz in frequency: far beyond human hearing. The area of their brain devoted to processing sound is comparable to the section of the human brain devoted to vision, our most dominant sense.

Dolphins also exhibit strange powers. They are known to be able to stun fish with sonic blasts from a distance, and then eat them at their leisure. They have even been observed to kill with this sonic burst, making it a truly unique weapon (but no human has ever been harmed this way, as far as I know). Of course, people ascribe even greater powers to the dolphins, including the healing powers of swimming with the dolphins. These powers are unfortunately, less scientifically documented.

Given all the attractive qualities of dolphins, one might reasonably expect that there's some pretty serious research going on to try to establish the possiblity of communicating with dolphins. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

First there is the extreme emotions that dolphins inspire in some people. Animal rights activists (quite justifiably) get upset when dolphins are killed by tuna fishers. Dolphins are a sort of marquee species because of their appeal and high level of identifiability, so they attract protests when they are kept by zoos and parks for entertainment. The very mythology that surrounds dolphins seems to invoke a sort of quasi-frenzy in those who campaign to protect them.

Meanwhile, probably the biggest and most serious dolphin research is done by organizations that have no interest in promoting them to the #2 most intelligent species on earth position. The point may seem subtle, but it has to be said, that if dolphins are found to be truly intelligent, there would be a great deal of controversy in using them in military programs. And the military research is, of course, shrouded in classification and secrecy.

The animus that must naturally develop between these two groups probably leaves many people considering serious scientific dolphin research a little uneasy. Perhaps studying some other animal might seem more appealing in context. And then of course there's the whole physical problem to deal with: dolphins spend their lives swimming around in the ocean; we don't.

Still, I wish that more brave scientists would take the challenge on. There is exciting potential in the approach of information theory and signal analysis that shows dolphin communications to be theoretically, as complex as human speech. If I could choose to communicate with an alien -- living right here on earth -- I would do it in a second. Maybe they would teach me more about how to muck about and have fun.

Links

Do dolphins talk? (SETI News) - A great, readable article by a SETI institute researcher interested in dolphins.

Dolphins recognize selves in mirrors (USA Today) - Easy to read article.

Mirror self-recognition in the bottlenose dolphin: A case of cognitive convergence (PNAS) - another study that shows the same result.

Out of the depths: Dolphins and whales in world mythology (The POD) - Dolphins turning into people and gods, saving ships, and some of the modern new age myths of dolphins.

Excerpts from: Organisation of communication system in tursiops truncatus montagu [PDF] (1989) - a fascinating read. It lays out a map of dolphin "language". It's a bit old though so it might be out of date. The PDF here is excerpted from J.A. Thomas and R.A. Kastelein (Eds) Sensory Abilities of Cetaceans: Laboratory and Field Evidence. Plenum Press, New York. 710 pp. (1989)

Navy's underwater allies: Dolphins (North County Times) (archived copy) - Update: North County Times still offers a highly incomplete archive of this story on their new website.

Annotated Bibliography of Publications from the U.S. Navy's Marine Mammal Program - very detailed navy report that seems to have provided most of the substance for the above.