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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."
...but don't goldfish only have a 3 second memory?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
And thank us for all the fish? Surely goldfish don't eat themselves.
Is a person that can figure out how to train an animal with a 3 second attention span:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bt6K521o3Y
FTA: "If you don't put a lid on top of the bowl a goldfish it will eventually jump out to enlarge the environment it is living in,"
Truly an astounding display of cognition.
"You put an animal in a box, even a lab rat or gerbil, and the first thing it wants to do is climb out of it. If you don't put a lid on top of the bowl a goldfish it will eventually jump out to enlarge the environment it is living in," he said. "But a dolphin will never do that. In the marine parks, the dividers to keep the dolphins apart are only a foot or two above the water between the different pools," he said. Manger says the thought to jump over would simply not cross their unsophisticated minds.
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.
I am reminded of the counter argument which noted that the enlarged part observed in Einstein's brain was due to the extra glia cells needed to support the higher activity of the same number of neurons.
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.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
I'm not anything close to the people who think dolphins are really really intelligent (though Douglas Adams makes a pretty good case), but IRTFA and I can not see how this is a serious article.
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.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
Does that make the fly smarter than me?
Who won?
I guess a rat brain in a pilot's uniform doesn't pick up as much skirt though.
No, but I'd hazard that a rat brain in a rat picks up a fair bit of tail.
KFG
Dolphins get trapped in nets because they can't detect them, not because they're too stupid to know what to do. Aside from the obvious fact, as someone else has already pointed out, that a goldfish that jumps out of it's bowl and dies isn't nessearily very smart, there are could also be complex psychological factors at play as to why dolphins might not attempt to escape.
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.