Goldfish Smarter Than Dolphins 530
flergum writes "While dolphins may have big brains, laboratory rats and goldfish can outwit them. It appears that the large brains are a function of their environment rather than intelligence. From the article: 'Dolphins have a superabundance of glia and very few neurons... The dolphin's brain is not made for information processing it is designed to counter the thermal challenges of being a mammal in water.' I guess this means that the Navy will start recruiting and training goldfish for those mine search and destroy missions."
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bizzaro science (Score:5, Insightful)
So because the dolphin isn't brainless enough to jump out of its tank and beach itself and die in the process, that makes them stupid? I suppose by comparison the child that plays away from road isn't as smart as the kid that plays in traffic, you know, the one that's seeking to "enlarge his environment" by becoming road pizza.
Uhmm. serious article? (Score:5, Insightful)
It ends: "Manger also points to the tuna industry, which under consumer pressure has gone to great lengths to prevent dolphins from being caught and killed by accident in nets.
"If they were really intelligent, they would just jump over the net because it doesn't come out of the water," he said."
Umm, yea, they would if they ware smart? *sigh* - how did this make *any* news at all. Even assuming that the gist of the article is true (about the different types of brain material) the rest is crap - was it "peer reviewed" (as the article points out) by other idiots? Maybe it is all a Rovian plot to discredit Aljazeera.net? I can not take the article and it's contents with any real sense of belief - it is so idiotic that I can not trust the rest of it. That's not to say they are incorrect - just that this individual article is is pure crap and one should not use it to base any belief on.
Bugs and rats smarter than people???? (Score:4, Insightful)
A fly has pretty much a hard-wired brain, but it is highly effective at finding food and keeping it alive.
Some while ago, some researchers managed to get a dish of 1500 (or 15000??) rat brain cells to fly a 747 simulator -- including handling complex actions like landing with wind shear. I bet it took less time to train the rat brain than it takes for a human to attend flight school. I guess a rat brain in a pilot's uniform doesn't pick up as much skirt though.
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:1, Insightful)
I hope that was a joke. If not then it supports everything he said about the sorry state of the education system. You don't need evidence to dismiss an unsupported (and let's face it, completely implausbile sounding) claim. The burden of proof runs the other way entirely.
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
KFG
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:1, Insightful)
How can a fish with 3 second memory remember how the environment look like when he's getting foodsupplies?
Sounds like nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing of that sort has been demonstrated for goldfish yet, but that does not mean it cannot be done, just that we simply do not know yet.
It has been shown for other species that they show surprisingly intelligent behaviour when trained and it is probably impossible to defined what "more intelligent" should mean for non-humans (it is already quite arbitrarily defined for humans). So the bottom line is - more animals are more intelligent than most people think. And dolphins have shown a quite surprising range of abilities that was not observed in any other marine animal yet.
Re:U.S. Navy: Dolphins are Damned Smart (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh come on, you can't possibly believe this bullshit.
Re:Having dived with dolphins in exotic places (Score:2, Insightful)
Bearing in mind that you have far more in common with a dolphin than with any fish, whatever the intelligence of either is.
KFG
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then there is this obsevation from another researcher in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
And another thing... goldfish jump out of their bowls and *die*. Yep, self destructing is sure a smart thing to do. NOT! It's not like a Dolphin can jump out of the tank, catch a bus to the ocean and take off. Or maybe it might want to stop at a Starbucks on the way. Have to think on that a while. Anyway, it is probably a smarter thing to stay put for them. Glad I figured that out.
Re:Bizzaro science (Score:1, Insightful)
An intelligent animal is supposed to think on its own, taking into account his particular environment at the moment, and not merely rely on its instincts.
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:1, Insightful)
Of course, you need evidence to dismiss a claim. You may choose not to bother dismissing it, but in that case, the claim simply remains unresolved.
I hope that was a joke. If not then it supports everything he said about the sorry state of the education system.
It's unscientific thinking like yours--dismissing claims for "sounding implausible" and placing "burdens of evidenc on people on a whim--that illustrates how poor our science education is.
I don't like this article (Score:4, Insightful)
The study author is not an animal behaviorologist (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly it was a slow news weekend. This report got a ton of coverage, which seems unwarranted given some of the abitrary standards of "intelligence" put forward by the researchers. The Wikipedia article on dolphin intelligence [wikipedia.org] provides a far better balanced view of the subject.
I had a quick look at the University of the Witwatersrand website. Dr. Manger is a lecturer at the School of Anatomical Sciences. He is not an animal behaviorologist.
While Dr. Manger is no doubt qualified to discuss the structure of a dolphin's brain, he is in no better qualified to draw conclusions about dolphin intelligence than any of us here on Slashdot. Perhaps this explains some of his eccentric statements, or why his opinions contrast so sharply with other research indicating a high level of social complexity in dolphin behavior.
That Dr. Manger's study is "peer-reviewed" is really neither here or nor there, since peer review usually occurs within an author's specialty and Manger's most controversial findings transcend his field.
Dr. Manger's comment that dolphins should be smart enough to jump out of tuna nets would seem simply bizzare if they weren't so outright callous.
Re:Uhmm. serious article? (Score:3, Insightful)
Another problem with this claim... (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, even in humans, there is a "superabundance" of glial cells, in that there are approximately 10 glial cells [athabascau.ca] for every neuron.
The really disturbing part... (Score:5, Insightful)
Back on topic, did you know that as far as we know, only three animals understand the concept of 'pointing at something'? These three are humans, chimpanzees and dolphins. Try it with your cat or dog. It will continue to look at your hand, not where you want it look, until the cows come home. Understanding symbols that stand for vectors in space require a greal deal of abstract thinking.
Re:Bizzaro science (Score:5, Insightful)
There is another issue at hand. Their brain is certainly different from ours, and they have followed a different evolutionary path, with a different set of problems. There is no telling what problems they might be GOOD at solving, evidence of one that they are bad at is not evidence that they are dumb. Consider many of the people in history who have been considered the most "intelligent". Many were schitzofrenic, which is fundamentally an inability to tell fact from fiction, and basically properly asses a situation in a rational way. The results of this can look extremly "stupid". Many have had social disorders as well, such that they did stupid things which caused them much pain in their lives... that's pretty "dumb". Still we consider them smart because they could solve problems no-one else could solve. There are many types of intelligence, and lack of one does not imply a low sum of them all.
Basically, we think of intelligence as someone who can solve a problem we can't. Often this implies they can't solve some problems that we can. The differences between humans and dolphins are much larger than within our species, it seems likely that they are good at a fairly disparate class of problems from what we're good at. It has oft been speculated by AI theorists that problems we consider hard are actually fairly easy compared to the problems we consider easy. The one's we consider easy are just the one's evolution needed to get 99.9% right, I.E. walking, learning language, etc. Consider abstract algebra. There are only a few axioms, and that's all there is to learn. From then on it's just a few theorems. learning Abstract math is really quite simple compared to learning natural language, with it's thousands rules and idioms, we're just not wired for it.
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
No, you need evidence to disprove a claim. If you choose not to bother disproving it, then you have dismissed it. That's what dismissing a claim means.
It's uncritical thinking like yours -- using words wrongly and not even bothering to check your spelling and punctuation before you post -- that illustrates how poor your entire education system is.
Re:Furthermore (Score:1, Insightful)
Academic B.S. Every cat I've had has recognized itself in the mirror. I can make eye contact with my cat _in_the_mirror_ and have it turn and look me in the face. Flow chart out the cognitive ramifications of that. How _deep_ that "self" recognition lies is a question for future cognitive science.
HOWEVER, the last two cats we got as kittens. They did NOT understand mirrors until they were going into cat adolescence. Might the researchers who tested cats have failed to appreciate that cat brains go through developmental stages the same as people brains?
Furthermore, consider the anoles commonly sold as "chameleons". Put a male one in front of a mirror and it will make an aggressive display. It thinks it is seeing _another_ anole. Do cats do this? No, they do not. Why? I suggest because they know what they are seeing isn't a threat (i.e. themselves).
Oddly, I think cognitive science is _still_ being hampered hundreds of years after Descartes' need as a Christian to distinguish humans from animals in his discussions of cognition. Rather, I would suggest that once cognitive science has duplicated a cat, tacked on a logic unit and a speech unit, and gotten it down to mobile size, it will have created one scary smart and dangerous robot.
Re:Furthermore (Score:4, Insightful)
Your example doesn't constitute the proof you think it does. If you are staring at each other through a mirror, that means YOU recognize its mirror image, and in return it recognizes YOUR mirror image. It doesn't have to recognize its own mirror image to pass that test. In fact if you stand off to the side while staring at someone in the mirror, you'll notice that you don't even have to see your own image at all to stare at someone else.
The issue is not whether cats can recognize the existence of other objects in a mirror. Clearly they can. The question is whether it can recognize that the cat-shaped object is itself, and use that information in some intelligent fashion.
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
The burden of proof lies with the individual making the claim. 'Prove me wrong' is not a valid substitute for evidence.
Placing the burden of proof on the individual making the claim is scientific.
Worst Logic Ever... (Score:2, Insightful)
This has got to be some of the worst logic ever. For one, the goldfish would die, that doesn't make it smart, it makes it stupid.
And for dolpins not to escape, could be argued that they're smart enough to know they have an easy life where they are in the fully staffed spa of luxury. Who'd want to leave?
I think from the article, that Dolphins are even more intelligent than the so called scientist that came up with this theory.
On a side note, anyone find it odd that this is report in Aljazeera?
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
what about depression-era suicides? (Score:1, Insightful)
Social intelligence actually would dictate that the self-aware individual might sacrifice itself for the good of the whole so jumping out of the tank could be an entirely conscious (or subconscious) decision in the same way that the Wall St. leap was. Go figure.
Re:Uhmm. serious article? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, because it's not like Reuters has had issues with credibility in the recent past, or anything.
They hunt and play like they're intelligent (Score:3, Insightful)
Moreover, the hunting patterns of dolphins are considerably more complex and 'intelligent-looking' than those of goldfish. Dolphins are more social, sure, but it takes more than a bunch of friendly animals to realize that they can use fishing nets to hunt.
Brain size and composition have ALWAYS been a bad indicator of intelligence. If it were the case merely that a big brain was enough to be smart, we'd be badly outclassed. From human to human, we'd see fair differences in intelligence, just based on the size of the brain (assuming that most human brains are composed similarly, and by increasing size, we merely increase the number of cells making up that brain -- tell me if that assumption is terribly off). Obviously this isn't true.
Fact of the situation: we're REALLY bad at figuring out what makes intelligence and what makes the brain work at all. I don't buy that goldfish are smarter yet. One study or group of studies is insufficient to make me believe this in the face of the observable evidence of intelligence or lack thereof.
And so are CNN and FOX. What's your point? (Score:4, Insightful)
You may as well post an article about how scientists have discovered life on the moon and use the Weekly World News as a source.
CNN and FOX News are any better?
Come on. ALL major news sources are propaganda outlets. That's how it works. The problem only arises when people think that their own country's news agency are above corruption.
As for the article, I'm sure the guy interviewed really believes his studies. How does that reflect on Aljazeera? All they're doing is reporting on recent claims from academia. All newspapers report stupid science news. So what?
-FL
Jerry Levy (Score:3, Insightful)
Humans have a great big corpus collousum -- it keeps both hemispheres of the brain at the same activation level. When we sleep, both sides function in unison -- I think we're talking deep sleep, here, not REM, where the two hemispheres are both active.
Dolphins cannot sleep for long. They need to breath, which means coming up for air, and so the corpus callousum of the dolphin is small -- the two hemispheres do NOT have the same activation. One goes flat while the other stays active. Hence, the dolphin is only really effectively using about half his brain at any time.
And hence, the dolphin is only half as smart as you'd expect per the brain size.
Trolls (Score:1, Insightful)
Good luck to both of you.