Over thousands of years, the human brain has expanded to cope in societies that have become more and more complex, in a process called ‘encephalisation’. This has left us with pretty large brains able to perform social functions like communication, empathy, language, teaching, shared goals and consensus decision-making.
But it seems like the same can be said for whales and dolphins...
Whales and dolphins (known in the biz as ‘cetaceans’) live in tightly knit, human-like societies, and even have names for each other, scientists have found. Existing in social groups, they talk to each other and have regional dialects. They also have a call that’s associated with an individual when they are not there, suggesting they even ‘gossip’ about each other.
We knew that dolphins were intelligent, but it looks like the underwater creatures are even more complex than we give them credit for.
According to Nature Ecology & Evolution, a journal published yesterday, it’s possible to predict the brain size of intelligent marine mammals by looking at the complexity of their social and cultural structures. The study looked at ninety different species of whales and dolphins, and it appears that intelligence among these sea animals developed as a way to manage social groups, just like humans.
Dr Susanne Shultz, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Manchester’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said: ‘the apparent co-evolution of brains, social structure, and behavioural richness of marine mammals provides a unique and striking parallel to the large brains and hyper-sociality of humans and other primates on land.
‘Unfortunately they won’t ever mimic our great metropolisis and technologies because they didn’t evolve opposable thumbs.’
Unlucky, guys.
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Dr Michael Muthukrishna, Assistant Professor of Economic Psychology at LSE, added: ‘This research isn’t just about looking at the intelligence of whales and dolphins, it also has important anthropological ramifications as well.
‘In order to move toward a more general theory of human behaviour, we need to understand what makes humans so different from other animals.
‘And to do this, we need a control group. Compared to primates, cetaceans are a more “alien” control group.’
Shultz, who was the lead author of the study, says ‘It is true we do not fully understand their world or how they impact the marine environment,’ adding, ‘We only have a pinhole view into the complexity of animal lives.’
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.