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."
Having dived with dolphins in exotic places (Score:5, Interesting)
I've also dived with many varieties of fish, but our interaction with dolphins off Tiputa Pass and Trousers Point (you can find both easily on Google) was qualitatively different from any with fish.
It basically sounds like Japanese propaganda to me. Might be time to make that donation to Sea Shepherd [indymedia.org].
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:GNAA Adopts Trusted Platform Module (Score:0, Interesting)
Gee, it's an organic Intel vs AMD comparison. (Score:5, Interesting)
If the word "intelligence" was defined as a certain ratio of neurons to glia, he'd have a point. Of course, "intelligence" wouldn't matter so much, because it would only matter in certain situations. Much like "clock speed".
I also don't see how the "jumping out of the bowl/over the net" even deserves a mention...unless we now have a way of interviewing dolphins and goldfish.
Why not use fat (Score:4, Interesting)
Nature (evolution) tends to take the most efficient solution -- natural selection will favour the animals that don't need to expend so much energy to achieve the same result.
U.S. Navy: Dolphins are Damned Smart (Score:2, Interesting)
What are these tasks? One task is locating anti-ship mines like those found in the Persian Gulf during the Iraq War. Another task is identifying unauthorized swimmers (likes Islamic terrorists) seeking to enter a harbor where naval warships are anchored.
I highly doubt that a goldfish can perform these tasks.
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Bizzaro science (Score:3, Interesting)
In this case, I'd say the dolphins and goldfish have one-up on you...
He was CLEARLY talking about jumping out of a tank, into a larger body of water. He specifically mentioned jumping-out of fishing nets, and the like. You know, things that would make sense.
I don't agree with his conclusions, though. It could be that Dolphins recognize they won't get fed if they leave, or have some other understanding, which goldfish do not. You'd really have to look at cases of abused and starved dolphins, to be sure.
Also, the fact that dolphins may not reason like us in a few specific cases, does not imply they can't be intelligent in other ways. Who knows, maybe their sensory system does not allow them to recognize that there is water nearby, and they do think they will be beached.
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:4, Interesting)
Furthermore (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Glia are no longer considered 'noncomputational' by neuroscientists. Recent research seems to show that glia, and not just neurons, may perform computational tasks. This is highly controversial at present, but we are far from being able to say that just because an animal has lots of glia that that does not indicate a potential for high brain functions.
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, I agree with you, the social complexity of a pod and the level of communication a pod uses when hunting shows that the entire glia/cortex story is loads of bull. The guys who wrote that bull should go to a delphinarium and watch some dolphins for a while.
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Because environmental conditions that are unique to each generation of animal cannot be solved by instinct.
Heir Of The Mess: Ants probably don't have much memory, but their programming enables them to function effectively, as well as enabling the group to act as a whole.
Ants need good memory to find their way back home from food. No, not all ants simply follow a chemical trail.
"Biologist Thomas Collett of the University of Sussex in England and his colleagues trained wood ants to walk along a wall to test if the insects also use visual clues.
"Like honeybees, ants stick to familiar routes but are flexible in choosing between routes.
"When ants were placed in a Y-shaped maze with a walls on each side, unfed ants also learned to choose the food path."
http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2005/11/
What a crock (Score:5, Interesting)
Dolphins are one of the few creatures that play games, such as playing tag with a peice of seaweed, or blowing bubble rings. This type of behaviour is often an indicator of high intelligence. To say that a Dolphin isn't much smarter than a Goldfish is an insult to both Dolphins and any human with half a brain to realise this article is a crock.
Re:Furthermore (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, and in pigs and in dogs. There is even evidence that a few very smart cats can as well.
So it's not that rare, but it so far it's only found the most adaptable of mammals.
Dolphins Using Tools? (Score:2, Interesting)
A group of dolphins has learned to use tools, with mothers teaching their daughters how to do so. That's pretty damn smart.
Just goes to show that you shouldn't take every slashdotted article for its face value.
Re:Furthermore (Score:3, Interesting)
If you know the whole dog and mirror gag, you can experiment at home. Some stupid dogs will at first react to a mirror as if it's another dog, while most will ignore it, but if you train your dog in using a mirror you can clearly see that over time they will recognize themselves. Note that dogs are naturally uninterested in mirrors, so you have to make a game of it to get their interest.
I am only guessing pigs can learn the same, because pigs have better abstract thinking (can do computer games, while dogs have no concept of or no interest in things that are not real).
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Furthermore (Score:2, Interesting)
But can a goldfish do this? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not saying that they're as smart as me, but they are at least as smart as other higher order animals, and certainly smarter than my goldfish who keeps trying to commit suicide.
Reason behind dolphins swimming alongside boats (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Furthermore (Score:3, Interesting)
When the scientists took apart Einsteins brain [nih.gov], they found that it was brimming with glial cells. Does that make him stupid ? Heck, I want my brain to contain more glials now
I am not sure whether this study is fully correct, if it is surmised only on the fact that it has more glial cells.
Could be that there could be other reasons. Anyways, I couldn't find the same in the article.
Cos, till now we have not been able to find the actual center of intelligence, and surmising that an animal is stupid just by looking at the composition of brains could be a little wrong. Brain size looks to be the best bet here.
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:3, Interesting)
There is certainly some type of procedural "memory" involved in this computation but it is probably quite different from the procedural or declarative memories that higher animals are capable of.
Re:Bizzaro science (Score:3, Interesting)
Goldfish are freshwater fish, are they not? They evolved in ponds and other enclosed waterspaces. For several centuries, they have continued to evolve in human-made enclosed waterspaces. Closed waterspaces can encounter conditions that make them dangerous for a fish to inhabit. For example, a pond could dry up. A goldfish might be well-advised to try to jump into an adjacent body of water such as a stream or another pond in such a situation.
A Dolphin would never find itself in such a circumstance in nature. Manmade barriers present an obstacle that is recent in the evolution of the dolphin, so the species has not developed instincts to seek other bodies of water. I mean, think about it--they live in the freaking OCEAN. The fact that they haven't solved the problem suggests that they lack innovative thought. It doesn't mean they lack intelligence entirely.
In sum, I think that the "intelligence" of goldfish, if it is presumed simply based on what a good scientist would consider an "escape instinct," is in doubt. Alternatively, the intelligence of dolphins, which has a much stronger base of evidence, remains unchallenged, though certainly noto ully understood. It's just bad science.
--Douglas Adams
Different environments (Score:4, Interesting)
Carp (eg goldfish) live in an environment in which jumping from one body of water to another offers a real chance of accessing a new environment, e.g. a new pond or stream. It also offers the ONLY chance of survival for carp trapped in small, evaporating puddles of water, which may well be how goldfish register their surroundings.
By contrast, a dolphin has only a fairly low chance of being able to jump into a whole new ocean. A zero chance, in fact.
Therefore, the tendency to jump may be more a reflection of the chance that jumping will do a given creature any good, rather than a sign of intelligence.
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:2, Interesting)
Cyprinidae (Score:3, Interesting)
Keeping mature goldfish is reputed to be like keeping dogs -- the fish recognize individuals and respond to them.
Goldfish, like koi, are carp, which are members of the Cyprinid family of fishes. Cyprinids include many species that are well known in the aquarium hobby: danios, rasboras, barbs etc. Many of these species are popular because they are active and considered highly intelligent.
I cycled my tank (established a colony of beneficial waste recycling bacteria) using a school of White Clouds, a cyprinid minnow about an inch long and closely related to rasboras. White clouds are attractive,active, peaceful little fish that are extremely hardy and good for this purpose (incidentally a much better candidate for "goldfish bowls" than goldfish, provided you're committed to daily water changes). They are also astonishingly intelligent.
My White Cloud school mostly patrolled the top third of my tank, snatching food from the surface or as it sank slowly. After several months, I introduced a pair of Corydoras -- a tiny armored cat fish -- to the the tank. Catfish of course are bottom feeders, and are constantly foraging in the gravel. When my White Clouds saw this, they started foraging in the gravel too. Their mouths point upward for snatching food from the surface, so they have to turn over on their backs to do it.
Clearly, this is not "instinctive" behavior. They saw and learned. With a brain that I doubt amounts to more than a cubic millimeter in volume.
The behavior of these fish are interesting; you need to keep a largish school to see the full range. Somewhere around eight or nine fish, suddenly you see a completely different set of behaviors emerge. Clearly they are intelligent fish despite their tiny size, but much of that intelligence comes out when there are enough fish for them to feel comfortable and confident.
Later I introduced some Danios to the tank, which changed the schooling behavior of the White Clouds. Danios, who are supposedly relatively peaceful and playful, have strong hierarchies in which the strongest fish (usually the most irridescent) claim territories. The "playful" behavior, if you watch closely, consists of the strongest fish chasing the next strongest fish out of his territory, and so on down the line. White Clouds aren't hierarchical, but they apparently look enough like danios to get chased. In my tank, the strongest danio cruised a territory consisting the top half foot of water and about 1/3 the surface area of the tank. So the White Clouds started lurking as individuals or groups of two or three in out of the way places. After adding another pair of white clouds, the behavior of the school changed. A pair of the more robust White Clouds who had previously been lurking far from the aggressive danio began patrolling the edge of the his territory. When a weaker white cloud strayed into the danio's territory and the danio attacked, they'd dart in to nip at his flanks. After a few days of this the danio's territory shrunk so that the White Clouds could school like they used to.
Instinctive behavior? In this case, certainly. The point is that these fish have evolved to school in hostile environments; evolution provided them with highly capable brains for the task of survival, depsite their small size. Furthermore, schooling is more than just huddling together to reduce the risk of predation to an individual in the school, these fish have social behaviors that strengthen the school. This means that there are signals, and coordination, and a
Re:Smart is one thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
The big question in animal intelligence is, "Are any animals other than humans capable of more than operant conditioning?" Interestingly enough, among the best scorers, possibly better than the non-human primates, is Alex, an African Grey parrot [google.com]. Alex can understand and accurately (80-90%) answer questions like "How many blue trucks" (in a set of mixed toys) without prior practice of a particular question, combining his understanding of the question "How many", the color "blue", and the object "truck". He can use numbers reasonably well on fixed quantities, but has trouble counting events. He also knows the concept of "zero". Still, some consider this just to be complex operant conditioning. BTW, I've read their methodology, and it seems quite sound. The person who determines what Alex says, for example, is unaware of what he's being asked)
One big criticism of primate studies, as well, is that most primates either don't form languages in the wild, or form very simple languages. Deaf human children whose parents never teach them sign language will actually make up sign languages and do meta-discussion (conversing about their language using their language). Parrots will make up languages (wild parrot populations even tend to have regional dialects, while different areas have different "language families", with loanwords, just like in human linguistics), but their invented languages tend to be simpler than what they can be taught. Without rigid training, parrots will often display what one may consider "clever" conditioning (such as, if a person doesn't respond to their requests for attention, making the sound of a phone ringing to draw a person into the room), but still conditioning. Also, both in primates and parrots, there's relatively little meta-conversation; it's mostly requests, things with immediate purposes. Even young human children tend to converse about things that are not for a specific purpose frequently.
Complicating studies of intelligence that rely on language is that it's not the only measure of intelligence. For example, corvines (crows, ravens, jays) are more adept toolmakers than psitticines (parrots) and even most primates. They both teach their children how to make/use tools and invent them on their own. Yet, they don't do nearly as well in language tests as psitticines. Are they more or less intelligent?
Anyways, my main point is: this is a complex topic that scholars get into heated debates over, so lets not expect a resolution here.
Re:Reason behind dolphins swimming alongside boats (Score:3, Interesting)
Dolphins and porpoises don't swim alongside boats, per se. They swim in the bow wave. Presumably they do this because they can get a free ride due to the physics of bow-wave formation. That is, with minimal effort, they can travel at the same speed as the boat. This is similar to birds (or gliders) staying aloft for long stretches of time by keeping themselves in the lift near a sea cliff.
With the dolphins, sometimes there are a bunch hovering around beside the boat because they can't all fit in the bow wave, but they seem to be just biding their time. Taking turns or whatever.
MM
PS, the level of intelligence of, for example, killer-whales in the wild is legendary. I realize that intelligence is hard to define, but for my money, dolphins and porpoises have it, and fish don't.
Re:Trolls (Score:5, Interesting)
"Lesser women" is a contradiction in terms in this context: I'm a man.
I can only take credit for being willing to stick with Andy after his stroke. It's a long and ugly story, but following an argument with his custodial parent several years ago, they won't let me see him. To avoid making the story even longer and uglier and dragging the rest of the family into it, I've chosen not to fight it. The "up" side of his memory loss is that he doesn't realize that I haven't been 'round to see him in a long time.