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Killer Whales Caught On Tape Speaking Dolphin
sciencehabit writes Two years ago, scientists showed that dolphins imitate the sounds of whales. Now, it seems, whales have returned the favor. Researchers analyzed the vocal repertoires of 10 captive orcas, three of which lived with bottlenose dolphins and the rest with their own kind. Of the 1551 vocalizations these seven latter orcas made, more than 95% were the typical pulsed calls of killer whales. In contrast, the three orcas that had only dolphins as pals busily whistled and emitted dolphinlike click trains and terminal buzzes, the scientists report in the October issue of The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. The findings make orcas one of the few species of animals that, like humans, is capable of vocal learning (video)—a talent considered a key underpinning of language."
Hmm.. Language learning could as well be within-species. Sounds more interesting here that dolphins and orcas can communicate spontaneously given close quarters.
All the more reason to free these suckers...god damn.
I get it though, they're no longer suited to living in the wild, etc etc. Can't we help them out with some head-mounted lasers or something?
For the things a cat typically considers intelligence, I bet that cats come out on top, too.
All megafauna is intelligent or it wouldn't have made it this long.
All megafauna have a combination of adaptive traits for their environment, some of which may be traits that we'd categorize under "intelligence". Intelligence isn't a scalar value. We might be able to measure its components by providing tasks that measure the presence and efficiency of specific capabilities of the brain and call the geometric distance from the 0-point "intelligence", but different animals will fall within different places in that multi-dimensional space. Some animals will have better scores than humans, in some dimensions. I'd posit that humans would have the greatest geometric distance from "0", though.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
What is with this new "humans are dumb" nonsense? Anything a cat can do a human can out-think and do better. Which is why any cat that is a physical threat to us or competes with us is endangered. They may fit their niche better than a human would but that does not make them more intelligent than a human.