Wednesday, November 04, 2009

DOLPHINS ARE EVEN SMARTER THAN WE SUSPECTED?


The days seem to be creating an order of their own. Yesterday it was psychdelics. Today it’s animals. Our homeboy Aeswiren sent us this story about revised estimates of dolphin IQ…

“At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, Kelly the dolphin has built up quite a reputation. All the dolphins at the institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. In this way, the dolphins help to keep their pools clean. Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on. This behaviour is interesting because it shows that Kelly has a sense of the future and delays gratification. She has realised that a big piece of paper gets the same reward as a small piece and so delivers only small pieces to keep the extra food coming. She has, in effect, trained the humans.” (Click here for the whole story.)

The secrey word is Flipper

4 comments:

Your driver said...

I've come across any number of animals who have trained humans or figured out how to get a response from humans. Some of them were astonishing. Humans don't seem to have come up with any useful means for testing animal intelligence. My old cat clearly thought that I was awfully sweet but not awfully bright. If dogs knew how rudimentary our sense of smell is they would probably consider us pretty stupid.

Anonymous said...

Mick,
Just a shot in the dark -- how do I get ahold of your agent? I'm a huge fan of Tijuana Bible and "Never Made it To Memphis".
I've been listening to that crazy piece for 11 years and one of my dreams is to put my twisted filmmaker's vision to it.
I hope this isn't too untoward but it was the only way I found to contact you.
Kris in Denver
papercatfilms@gmail.com

x_S said...

too bad they only have flippers, otherwise we could teach them sign language...

Anonymous said...

FUCK YOU DOLPHIN!!! FUCK YOU WHALE!!