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Just How Intelligent Are Dolphins?

1 pointsby hheikinhabout 4 years ago

1 comment

ggmabout 4 years ago
I like that tests for cognition are both getting &quot;better&quot; and also more diverse. It used to be focussed on really crude things like mirror-self recognition, or attempts to bridge the speech gap.<p>Now, it seems to me to be more accepting that things like implied lying, or if-this-then-that conditional logic, or evidence of introspection or altruism (refusal to accept higher grade outcomes than the peer-set beyond some limit, sharing) are being done, with good grounding (not clever-hans prompted&#x2F;learned behaviour, proper double-blind science)<p>Magpies (Australian members of the corvid group, not European Magpies) appear to hold courts and punish misbehaviour. I believe dolphins do similar things. And, their interaction with humans can go beyond &quot;you feed me&quot; to include play, and what seems to be genuine interest in the world beyond the water.<p>Play is (I think) an underrated measure of intelligence. It implies having judgement of the work-life balance (for an animal, finding food would be work surely)