Brain Power Magazine - brought to you by MSO Worldwide

ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE -- Dolphin Friendly

Dolphin Talk

Few animals are as universally popular as the dolphin. This playful creature is always willing to join in the fun and seems to have a perpetual grin on its face, suggesting undying friendship and an intelligence close to man's own. Now dolphins are even being used to help handicapped children, with startling results.

There is the case of Marc Glendenning, who had defied all the efforts of speech therapists at Great Ormond Street Hospital to help him talk. At the age of three he uttered the first word of his life "Tina". But Tina is not the name of his mother, his nurse, or even his speech therapist: it is the name of a dolphin who Marc was cavorting with in the water in a buoyancy suit.

Marc is one of several children who have benefitted from a treatment pioneered by Dr David Nathanson at the Dolphin Research Centre in Miami. Nathanson's technique is based on the theory that children with learning problems are unable to concentrate for more than a few moments, but with animals they can become absorbed for much longer periods.

Dolphins are ideally suited to this role. When vocabulary lessons are linked to playing with dolphins, the child is motivated to perform at new levels. According to Nathanson, "It's the same as grandma's principle that if you want ice cream for dessert, you have to eat your vegetables first," he says. "Dolphins are poetry in motion. They are lovely to touch. They love nuzzling the children and giving them rides. People look at them and are mesmerised."

These beneficial effects can apply, not only to the specific instance of children with learning difficulties, but to all ill and depressed people. Contact with dolphins can have a healthy effect on anyone.

Dolphin Cunning

However, dolphins are not all sweetness and light, they can be very crafty as well. Researchers into the behaviour of the bottlenose dolphin off the coast of Australia have discovered that groups of male dolphins will form alliances with other teams in order to gang up on a third group and steal the latter's fertile females, who are highly prized as they only bear a single calf once every four or five years. Having separated the female from her group the males will retain a close formation around her to prevent her from escaping, performing a series of spectacular and threatening feats. If this behaviour fails to impress the female, they will chase after her, bang into her, bite her and slap her to force her into line. Obviously it would be impossible for a single male to do this on his own, as there is no size difference between the sexes and the female could flee easily.

The behaviour of these dolphins seems to be unique in the animal kingdom. Many male primates, including chimpanzees and baboons, are known to form gangs to attack rival groups, but none of them have ever been known to solicit a second group to attack a third. These dolphin alliances are not permanent and can shift from day to day. Dolphins are highly opportunistic, always calculating who is a friend and who is a foe. There is also evidence that the females form equally sophisticated alliances in order to try to thwart male encroachment and that these groups will chase the males if one of their number is captured.

According to Dr Richard Connor of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, the demands of these intricate and ever-changing social allegiances and counter-allegiances could have been the force driving the evolution of intelligence among dolphins. Some species of dolphin, such as the bottlenose, usually act by consensus, spending hours nuzzling each other and generating an eerie nautical symphony of squeaks, whistles, barks, twangs and clicks. It may be that the development of these communication skills has led to greater intelligence among dolphins than other animals.

Issue 3: Contents | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8