Are dolphins the smartest animal?
Meera Mahesh
The largest dolphin ever recorded was 9.8m long and was heavier than two African adult elephants, coming in at 10, 001 kg! This dolphin was the largest recorded male killer whale, which before you ask, is in fact a type of dolphin.
Give me some dolphin history
Dolphins, whales, and porpoises are all part of the same animal group, called Cetaceans (pronounced, suh-tay-shuns). It might surprise you that Cetaceans, who are now some of the most loved sea creatures, began as land mammals, cousins of the Artiodactyla (the hoofed animals, which include camels and giraffes). About 55 million years ago, a certain portion of these animals adapted to living in the water, where they were large predators. There was a sudden shift in sea temperatures 35 million years ago, and this led to a lot of adaptation amongst these now sea animals, so they ended up with smaller and less sharp teeth, a much more complex, large brain, and the navigation and communication tool called echolocation.
Are dolphins the smartest animal?
The answer is no. But dolphins can be seen as the second smartest animal, essentially saying they’re the smartest out of the non-human creatures. There are many ways of measuring how clever or smart an animal is. Some ways are by looking at the complex social interactions between each member of the species, their ways of navigation, their physical awareness, their metacognition (don’t worry, we’ll learn more about this below!), and finally, their encephalization quotient.
Encephalization quotient?!
This is how big an animal’s brain is in proportion to their body. Scientists think that this ratio has something to do with how intelligent an animal is. Humans, as you could probably guess, have the largest quotient, at a whopping 7. Dolphins aren’t far off us, at around 5. Your pet dog is in at around 3. It may be due to this that dolphins have so many traits that we see among human toddlers.
Tell me how clever they are!
A group of Floridian bottlenose dolphins showed their teamwork and smarts when they were caught working together to catch fish. One dolphin would scrape the sea floor, creating a circle of mud, causing the smaller fish within the circle to panic and try to jump out of the water, and the rest of the dolphins would eat their share of these fish as they would jump right into their mouths.
Dolphins are also one of the few animals that can recognise themselves in the mirror, which is seen as an important hallmark of intelligence through physical awareness. Even cooler, they have a trait called metacognition. This means that they can analyse their own thinking. That means they can think about something, and then realise how much they know about that subject, and how confident they are in that knowledge. A hallmark of metacognition is being uncertain and delaying a response until there is further information. Scientists were able to set up an experiment, where animals had to choose between two options, and were penalised if they were wrong. Dolphins were one of the animals that hesitated when they were not sure, indicating their intelligence – birds, in comparison, ended up ploughing forward even when they had no idea! Very few animals outside humans and dolphins have such complex thought processes, which is a sure sign that they are very intelligent.
Our sea-mpathetic companions
Dolphins are an elite animal. Not only are they very clever and have complex social interactions, they are also one of the most empathetic animals. There are many stories about how dolphins have saved humans from drowning, with some tales of dolphins circling humans for over 30 minutes to ward off great white sharks, and other tales of dolphins saving a fisherman after his boat overturned during a storm. We have a responsibility to keep these animals safe, and to keep enjoying how unique they are!