Slashdot Mirror
Should Dolphins Be Treated As Non-Human Persons?
Hugh Pickens writes "Dolphins have long been recognized as among the most intelligent of animals, but now the Times reports that a series of behavioral studies suggest that dolphins, especially species such as the bottlenose, have distinct personalities, a strong sense of self, can think about the future and are so bright that they should be treated as 'non-human persons.' 'Many dolphin brains are larger than our own and second in mass only to the human brain when corrected for body size,' says Lori Marino, a zoologist at Emory University. 'The neuroanatomy suggests psychological continuity between humans and dolphins and has profound implications for the ethics of human-dolphin interactions.' For example, one study found that dolphins can recognize their image in a mirror as a reflection of themselves — a finding that indicates self-awareness similar to that seen in higher primates and elephants. Other studies have found that dolphins are capable of advanced cognitive abilities such as problem-solving, artificial language comprehension, and complex social behavior, indicating that dolphins are far more intellectually and emotionally sophisticated than previously thought. Thomas White, professor of ethics at Loyola Marymount University, has written a series of academic studies suggesting dolphins should have rights, claiming that the current relationship between humans and dolphins is, in effect, equivalent to the relationship between whites and black slaves two centuries ago."
How do they taste?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
they should be treated as 'non-human persons.'
Corporations are, so why not dolphins...
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Why don't we just leave them to their business, and keep to our own? Otherwise, we'll have community organizers signing up dolphins to vote in elections and lobbying for tax dollars to fund flipper-accessible housing.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Lots of creatures exhibit some form of intelligence. Should they have rights too? And why is intelligence the only factor? Should a stupid person have less rights than a dolphin? What about faster? or stronger? Should animals which have those traits be given rights too?
Why do we have the right to give other creatures rights?
And do you think tuna fishermen are going to stop using nets because they might catch something which has rights?
Get back to me when humans develop echolocation senses or become smart enough to stay out of traffic accidents.
My experiences is that most people studying dolphins are quick to rely on confirmation bias.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I have an easy solution! When dolphins (and dolphins alone) can create tools and devices such that they are able to wage war for their freedom, it should be granted. Until then, they're screwed.
What can they do? All the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. Mankind, on the other hand, has achieved so much – the wheel, New York, wars and so on. Clearly, we are much more intelligent.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I might remind you that humans didn't develop these capabilities until the last 10,000 years or so after around 2 billion years of evolution. Dolphins are/were quite content with their lives in the ocean being at the top of the food chain. What need did they have to develop civilization (although they are social animals), science or inventions? Humans were forced to come up with these to survive. That doesn't make humans better, just different.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Some human "persons" don't understand that they have that right until you explain it to them.
Look at the caste systems.
Because they live in a colder environment, their brains contain a higher percentage of glial cells, to generate warmth. We have fewer, as a percentage, but more of the neurons that actually process information. So bald comparisons of their brain size with ours are meaningless.
They kidnap females so they can rape them.
Yup, they sure act human-like.
When they're able to ask for it, then it's obvious they deserve it.
This is awfully absurd. Maybe they are already asking to be let out of Seaworld and all the other cages we keep them in. Perhaps we aren't capable of understanding them? Does one simply ignore all signs of intelligence because we simply enjoy their tricks? Your suggestion in many ways is how slavery was justified by stating that the slaves were somehow an inferior animal.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/75068
4. For the Love of Dolphins
Perhaps the most troubling experiment in recent history is the dolphin-intelligence study conducted by neuroscientist John C. Lilly in 1958. While working at the Communication Research Institute, a state-of-the-art laboratory in the Virgin Islands, Lilly wanted to find out if dolphins could talk to people. At the time, the dominant theory of human language development posited that children learn to talk through constant, close contact with their mothers. So, Lilly tried to apply the same idea to dolphins.
For 10 weeks in 1965, Lilly's young, female research associate, Margaret Howe, live with a dolphin named Peter. The two shared a partially flooded, two-room house. The water was just shallow enough for Margaret to wade through the rooms and just deep enough for Peter to swim. Margaret and Peter were constantly interacting with each other, eating, sleeping, working, and playing together. Margaret slept on a bed soaked in saltwater and worked on a floating desk, so that her dolphin roommate could interrupt her whenever he wanted. She also spent hours playing ball with Peter, encouraging his more "humanoid" noises and trying to teach him simple words.
As time passed, it became clear that Peter didn't want a mom; he wanted a girlfriend. The dolphin became uninterested in his lessons, and he started wooing Margaret by nibbling at her feet and legs. When his advances weren't reciprocated, Peter got violent. He started using his nose and flippers to hit Margaret's shins, which quickly became bruised. For a while, she wore rubber boots and carried a broom to fight off Peter's advances. When that didn't work, she started sending him out for conjugal visits with other dolphins. But the research team grew worried that if Peter spent too much time with his kind, he'd forget what he'd learned about being human.
Before long, Peter was back in the house with Margaret, still attempting to woo her. But this time, he changed his tactics. Instead of biting his lady friend, he started courting her by gently rubbing his teeth up and down her leg and showing off his genitals. Shockingly, this final strategy worked, and Margaret began rubbing the dolphin's erection. Unsurprisingly, he became a lot more cooperative with his language lessons.
Discovering that a human could satisfy a dolphin's sexual needs was the experiment's biggest interspecies breakthrough. Dr. Lilly still believed that dolphins could learn to talk if given enough time, and he hoped to conduct a year-long study with Margaret and another dolphin. When the plans turned out to be too expensive, Lilly tried to get the dolphins to talk another way--by giving them LSD. And although Lilly reported that they all had "very good trips," the scientist's reputation in the academic community deteriorated. Before long, he'd lost federal funding for his research.
This article originally appeared in mental_floss magazine
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/75068
How do you know what the gap is? I suppose it's easier to tell with our closest relatives, because there's some sort of baseline. But when you start talking about species who live in considerably different environments from us, like aquatic mammals, I think it becomes a good deal harder. For all you know, a whole lot of dolphins are saying "Fuck you murdering bastards" to the Japanese hunters that kill them en masse.
And rightly so. I'm not saying that dolphin-killers aren't scum. But so are gorilla-killers and elephant-killers. And people who torment cats and dogs. I'm all for decent treatment of animals. I'm convinced that the "higher" animals have feelings too, and deserve to not be tortured or slaughtered or bred in brutal ways. But don't pretend that they're people, because they're just not.
I am suggesting that it's a little to pat and really an application of circular reasoning to say "They're not persons because they're not like us, and we know this because they don't act like us."
That's not circular reasoning, it's simply an observation. What better definition of person than "like us" do we have? If merely having a sense of self and a personality is enough to get the right to vote, then quite a lot of animals will fit that bill. Sure, dolphins are smart, but so are chimps and elephant. And whales, orang-utans and crows. But none of them come anywhere near any semblance of the kind of cultural ability that we have.
We like to imagine ourselves as special, as evidenced by the way we write our mythologies and philosophy, but that's ego talking, not evidence.
What? You don't think the fact that we write mythologies and philosophy at all makes us special among animals?
All that distinguishes us from the other apes is brain size to body mass ratio. And even then, the gulf isn't vast.
No, it's the fact that we write mythologies and philosophy that distinguishes us from other apes. And that gulf is vast.
We can safely assume that any mammal with a similarly large brain in relation to body mass has the same range of emotions, capacity for complex thought, self-awareness, creativity, what-have-you.
No we can't. That's pure speculation. In fact, it's not so much the size of the brain that matters, but the structure.
Fun (but somewhat disturbing) fact--
Some species of dolphin have prehensile penises, and have been shown to pick up and manipulate objects using their genital slits.
(Star shoots over head while jingle plays)
"The more you know!"
Except that argument conflates "personhood" with "capacity" (that is, the legal term capacity). The poster you were replying to specifically referred to the former, you responded as if they'd argued about the latter. They aren't the same thing.
A child can't sign a contract, make a will, drink, etc as they lack the legal capacity. They're still "people". The legal restrictions on capacity make that abundantly clear. What they don't have is the ability to fully understand the consequences of their actions. They have rights, but aren't mature enough to have the responsibilities that come with.
I realize this is a nit-picking distinction, but it's relevant. A person is protected under the law, irrespective of capacity. You can't go out and kill a retarded man and argue before a judge that, as the victim lacked capacity, he was not a person, and therefor fair game. Acknowledging dolphins as "persons" in a limited way extends legal protection to them, even if they aren't afforded the same legal status as a mentally sound adult human being.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.