Goldfish Smarter Than Dolphins

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."

Comments

Think I prefer dolphins

[vinsci]

• Dolphins save swimmer from shark 1996-07-26
• Dolphins save man from shark attack 2002-07-23
• Dolphins save swimmers from shark attack 2004-11-24

...and that's just a few of the top results from a quick Google search.

Re:Smart is one thing...

[tverbeek]

My boyfriend suffered a stroke which crippled his short-term memory. For example, one time when I was talking to Andy on the phone, he was distracted by something and put the phone down, and I had to yell to get his attention and remind him that I was still on the line. "Hi there! What's up?" Nonetheless, his therapists succeeded in teaching him some adaptive behaviors, and could still learn some new information with a lot of repetition (what year it is, where I was going to school, the fact that I'd moved). Furthermore, there are some kinds of learning which don't depend upon short-term memory; someone with no short-term memory may not remember why he avoids the place where he burned his hand on a hot pan, or why he prefers to be around one person but not another... but he does. For a good demonstration of short-term-memory deficiency, see "Finding Nemo"; Dory is a remarkably good example. I even used the "P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney" method (asking him to repeat it over and over) to get Andy to remember the name of the restaurant where we'd had dinner.