“It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reason.” - Douglas Adams, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

In the 1960s, Dolphin researchers began the difficult process of figuring out what all the squeaks, clicks and whistles that the dolphins make mean. Over the past four decades, it has become clear that the vocalizations of the magnificent animals contain structure, syntax and rules, presumably rules of grammar.

The most important finding (so far) has come about in only the past month, and it is this: Dolphins have names.

"We thought this was something fairly unique to human language," said Vincent M. Janik of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, the lead author of a paper on the subject in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Now we find it in dolphins, too."

Let’s be clear on this. We are not talking about some kind of ‘I am here’ vocalization. This is a name in the sense that, in addition to using it in the first person, it is also used in the second and third person, in other words, Dolphins will use names to refer to other Dolphins.

If Dolphins have names, and a structured language (as reported by Markov and Ostrovskaya of the Russian Academy of Sciences) then where does that lead?

Knowing the difference between I, you, him, her and them is a pretty good indicator for sentience. Unfortunately, humans and dolphins share little in common. We cannot survive for long away from our own environments. We have very few common frames of reference. We do not have a shared history to any meaningful degree from which we can find common ground to help us understand them.

Dolphins understand us pretty well, at least those that interact with us in captivity. They are quick to learn, and become bored easily. Dolphins can collaborate on creating new ‘tricks’ that we have never seen before when asked to. They are careful, when dealing with ‘new’ people to not freak the person out, seemingly aware of how fearful people can be of touching a ‘wild’ animal.

Dolphin intelligence has never been in question. Dolphin sentience however, the idea that they can consider (if they so chose to) the concept of ‘I think, therefore I am’, is a new one, but this is an idea that is becoming harder and harder to dismiss.

Dolphins understand us, and are (apparently) quite tolerant of us. They have even been known to help divers in distress. We do not understand them to any meaningful degree, beyond knowing that they can be of use to us. The US Navy uses Dolphins for mine sweeping.

From the US Navy Marine Mammal Program website:

“In the operation of these systems, a dolphin waits to receive a cue from its handler before it begins to search a specific area using its biological sonar called echolocation. When a dolphin echolocates, it emits a series of clicks that bounce off an object and return to the dolphin, allowing a dolphin to construct a mental image of the object. The dolphin reports back to its handler, giving one response if a target object is detected and a different response if no target object is detected. If a mine-like target is detected, the handler sends the dolphin to mark the location of the object so it can be avoided by Navy vessels or dealt with by Navy divers.”

So we are using sentient beings to do dangerous work for us without affording them the same rights and privileges as we expect for ourselves.

There is a word for that.  There’s probably a word for it in Delphinic as well, and it probably don’t sound too nice.

Dolphins are killed, captured, poisoned, eaten and used as slave labor. By us.

It is true that, apart from the eating (for the most part) we still do the same things to each other. The difference? We know that is wrong, and we know because when we do it, the people we are doing it to tend to say ‘No! Please don’t do that!’ or words to that effect.

I don’t know what the answer is to this problem. I want us to understand Dolphins, and for that we need to study them. Consider, what would Dolphins say to us if we finally learn their languages?

I cannot become to imagine what it would be like to truly have a conversation with an intelligent, non-human life form. Would they be able to fill in some gaps for us in history? What legends would they share (if any)? Do they have a concept of God and religion? Do they know where Atlantis is?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not assigning Dolphins some kind of moral high ground. I don’t think we can do that, since our and their concepts of morality would be completely different and probably incompatible to a large extent.

The truth is though, I don’t know enough about them. And neither do you. One of the things we did invent (apart from New York and Wars) was the internet, and I think it’s pretty cool. Because now, when you don’t know something, you can go find out about it, and that is what I would like you to do now.

Go learn about Dolphins. Here are some links to help you:

http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct04/smarter.html - Smarter than the average chimp.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphins - Wiki entry for Dolphins

http://www.bluevoice.org/ - BlueVoice.org  – Saving Dolphins and Whales

http://www.dolphins.org/ - Dolphin Research Center

http://www.dolphin-institute.org/ - The Dolphin Institute

Knowledge is Power. Please, learn as much as you can about dolphins and share what you know with your friends and family. This is a simple thing to do that can be very powerful – raise the level of consciousness about dolphins and we you raise the level of debate, which in turns leads to positive changes!

Vaughan Wynne-Jones, author of Being Human, a Guide to Metaphysics, is currently taking time out of writing his next book to annoy as many people as possible about dolphins until they take the hint and stop abusing these wonderful, intelligent and sentient beings.