Intelligence and rational behaviour in the bottlenosed dolphin

Abstract

A rational animal is defined as one that can perceive and represent how its world is structured and functions, and can make logical inferences and draw conclusions that enable it to function effectively and productively in that world. Further, a rational animal is able to incorporate new evidence into new perspectives of the world and can then modify its behaviours appropriately-in effect creating a new or revised model of the world in which it is immersed. Rational behaviour is necessarily built on the bedrock of general and specific intellectual capacity. Intelligence, a multidimensional trait, may appear to various degrees in various behavioural, cognitive, or social domains. Data and observations are presented on dolphin cognitive performance and on apparent rational responses within four intellectual domains within the context of a variety of empirical studies that we have conducted. These domains are: (a) the declarative (semantic or representational) domain (does the dolphin display knowledge or understanding about things?); (b) the procedural domain (does the dolphin exhibit competency in means, operations, or methods?); (c) the social domain (does the dolphin reveal social awareness and appropriate responsiveness in social interactions or relations?); and (d) the domain of the self (does the dolphin exhibit knowledge or awareness of itself?). In each case, the particular experimental paradigms are briefly outlined and instances of apparent inferential or creative acts within each paradigm are given.

Cetacean brains: How aquatic are they?

“…Therefore, the massiveness of the telencephalon cannot be attributed solely or even mainly to audition. As discussed before, odontocetes possess a large expanse of ''integrative neocortex,'' which is consistent with the experimental literature showing highly sophisticated general cognitive processing capacities (Herman, 2002(Herman, , 2006. If acoustic processing is playing a role in odontocete brain expansion, it is clearly doing so at a very high level of cognitive integration.…”

“…An interesting possibility is that some learning and memory functions were transferred from the reduced hippocampal formation to the extremely well-developed cortical limbic lobe (periarchicortical field above the corpus callosum and the entorhinal cortex) in odontocetes (Oelschlager and Oelschlager, 2002;Marino et al, 2003Marino et al, , 2004b. This hypothesis would account for the copious behavioral evidence for strong learning and memory skills in odontocetes (Herman, 2006).…”

Dolphin social intelligence: complex alliance relationships in bottlenose dolphins and a consideration of selective environments for extreme brain size evolution in mammals

“…Motor synchrony is under sophisticated cognitive control in bottlenose dolphins. Herman (2002Herman ( , 2006 trained bottlenose dolphins to perform novel synchronous behaviours on command. Specifically, when dolphins were given two commands, 'tandem' (perform a behaviour together) and 'create' (perform any behaviour), the dolphins would self-select a behaviour and perform it synchronously.…”

A Veterinary and Behavioral Analysis of Dolphin Killing Methods Currently Used in the “Drive Hunt” in Taiji, Japan

“…Individuals produce and respond to individually distinctive stereotypic whistles to locate, contact, and identify conspecifics (Janik and Slater, 1998). They show advanced cognition (Herman, 2006;Marino et. al, 2007) 40 minutes recorded in some of the dolphin species (Miller, Daniels, Schurch, Schoel, & Orgeig, 2006;Noren & Williams, 2000;Snyder, 1983;Kooyman, Ponganis, & Howard, 1999).…”