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Hongyang Li

Prof. Lynda Haas

Writing 39C

2/26/2018

Dolphin Cognition and Problem on Dolphin Hunting

Introduction Commented [1]: Indent your paragraphs

A question always being asked today among people including you and me is that “Do you

believe animals have intelligence?” The answers are different with respect to different individuals. Commented [2]: make the sentence more active.

Jennifer Vonk, a comparative psychologist at Oakland University in Michigan said that people want to be

special in the world; perhaps that is why hearing about the cleverness of animals makes some people a

little uncomfortable. However, primatologist Frans de Waal, a leader in the field of animal cognition

research, suggests it’s time we wipe our minds of the idea that there is only one type of intelligence:

“Animal cognition is more like a bush. The corvids [crows and ravens] branch in one direction, the

dolphins in another, the primates, including us, in another. You can’t put them on a simple scale,

because all animals are very smart in what they need to do to survive.”

Cetaceans are another specie considered to be intelligent. In Carl Safina’s book, Beyond Words:

What Animals Think and Feel, he introduces the level of communication of dolphins through a

complicated skill in understand language which is “syntax”. Safina defines syntax as the understanding

that the order of the words will change the meaning of a sentence. According to Herman, the captive

dolphin researcher, dolphins could realize differences in the sentences in different arrangements
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(Safina, 89). For example, dolphins can understand the syntax of sign-language sentences amounting to

“Touch the Frisbee with your tail and then jump over it.” Dolphins understand enough to ignore Commented [3]: cite who stated this

nonsense commands. They can learn several dozen human words and understand short sentences.

However, in the chapter “Killer Wails”, Safina spends more sections to describe dolphins’ real world and

society. He finds it is infinitely more demanding, dimensional, and high-stakes than a pool with a human

or two and a few toys (Safina 313).

Toni Frohoff, a behavioral biologist who specializes in cetacean research, says that cetaceans

(dolphins, porpoises and whales) are an order of fully-aquatic mammals who have engrossed scientists

and the public alike with their large complex brains, impressive intelligence, and social and

communicative sophistication（1）. Scientific research of cetaceans began in the 1970s and it has

contributed much to our understanding of this species; interest remains high, with new organizations

and researcher studies being performed every year.

This review will focus on recent researches in cetacean cognition; however, several historical

studies contributed greatly to the progress in dolphin research and I would like to mention them to give

a brief introduction of how the researchers have developed their ideas. In 1970, scientists Luis Herman

proved that dolphins could retain memories of learned skills. In 1980, Herman also discovered that

dolphins could maintain representation associated with recent events for minutes, which is a process

often referred to as working memory. Moreover, He argued that memory formation and use are

foundational to all cognitive processes of dolphins. Then in 1999, Mercado and Murray questioned the

semantic memories and episodic memory of dolphins; two years later, Lea researched whether human

actions can impact the psychological lives of dolphins. Today, more and more experiments and tests are

continuing to provide details about the dolphin cognition, including the most recent research by Racheal

Morrison on dolphin self-awareness.

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From the numerous sources shown above, we could have a brief preview of the cognition of

dolphins. This review will focus on recent researches in dolphin cognition, analyzed through self-

awareness, social behavior, and ability to interpret human gestures.

The graph presents the body weight with brain weight. The black line is the average ratio of the body

weight and brain weight for these chosen animals. And we can find that chimpanzee, man and dusky

dolphins are all above that average value; therefore, this is one of the reasons that dolphins could

behave intelligently and cognitively.

Self-awareness of Dolphin Commented [4]: merge into one paragraph

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Written by Rachel Morrison and Diana Reiss, Precocious development of self-awareness in Formatted: Highlight
Formatted: Highlight
dolphins focus on the self-awareness of young dolphins. Morrison and Reiss are from the Department of
Commented [6]: merge into one paragraph
Formatted: Highlight
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Psychology of The Graduate Center of The City University of New York and The Hunter College. This

article has also been elected by PLOS ONE as a good source recommend for the cognition of dolphins. Commented [7]: merge into one paragraph

The main problem two authors would like to solve through this research is to determine when Formatted: Highlight

the young dolphins start to become self-aware. The theory of MSR which stands for the Mirror-self

recognition is an indicator of self-awareness and it has been applied to different animals, including apes,

elephants and dolphins which is the species authors prefer to study. In fact, MSR testament has been

demonstrated in adult dolphins already but this research is the first time that apply it toward the young

dolphins. Therefore, researchers follow the similar strategies with the previous adult dolphin

experiment.

For the method of this research, several sessions were applied in order to train and measure the

MSR of the two young dolphins. For example, the mark test session exposes dolphins to the mirror for

approximately fifteen minutes in the purpose to train them. Then comes the baseline session, in which

researchers removed the mirror and determined how the dolphins behaved and measure whether they

are self-awareness or not. Scientists tested the change of behaviors of two dolphins when the mirror

was removed to determine their cognition of themselves towards the image in the mirror. The total

session of the experiment is 57 and the result shows that one of them passed the test at an age of two

years and seven months, while the other passed five months earlier.( ) Morrison and Reiss conclude

that their results indicate that self-directed behavior at mirror emerged in a dolphin at seven months of

age, which is much earlier than that of humans and chimpanzees.

This research is the latest research of the three papers I chosen for the topic, cognition of

dolphins. Therefore, to present the older researches, I would like to have my audience to be familiar

with the research result nowadays instead of the previous as some experiments before are limited by

the condition and technology. Although, in science we could not never consider a proof as a fact, the
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newest technology does improve the accuracy of the experiment to become more credible. In the next

paper I found will focus more about the improvement of the previous research.

Social Behavior of Dolphin

In 2006, Richard C. Connor from the Biology Department of University of Massachusetts

Dartmouth, with Rachel Smolker from University of Vermont Burlington and Lars Bejder from Dalhousie

University Halifax, finished the article “Synchrony, social behavior and alliance affiliation in Indian Ocean

bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops aduncus” which mainly discussed about how synchronous behavior takes

place when a group of dolphins swimming. Why is synchrony important? The reason is it can describe

occasions when group members perform behaviors that show nonrandom temporal clustering. And the

data authors taken from is the one being collected during 1987 to 1989 from 20 dolphins in Shark Bay.

Whereas the first one was studying their cognition through self-awareness in a mirror, this one studies it

through observing how they socialize with and synchronize with each other. In order to do this, they

have to have "social intelligence" which is another aspect of cognition. Moreover, the focus on the

relation between synchrony and social behavior is one of the most important reasons to prove the

dolphin cognition. As authors stated in the essay, all the syncs that tested from 1987 to 1989 samples Commented [8]: nice comparison; you can add more
here and link the two together. It'll help bring structure
to the essay and create a solid backbone. You can
were supposed to be ignored the fact of socialization of dolphins. To be more precise, the petting which
then cut come summary.

is the social action of dolphins have to be concerned.

The method being applied is from several aspects, such as distance and stagger, time

differences, membership and social behavior. Besides the sample from 1980s, researchers mentioned

that they also added the 2004 samples into the result to determine the conclusion. As the new data has

been included, the result will have a section related to synchrony and social behavior which did not be

measured in the older samples. In the discussion section, authors also mentioned their discovery about

the degree of synchrony with related to the alliance behavior and declared that it is unique from other
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mammals. However, researchers could only prove that synchronous surfacing might be an alliance signal

derives from variation in the phenomena. More experiments are needed to determine this hypothesis

Interaction between Human and Dolphin Commented [9]: Merge together

The research paper “The Dolphin’s (Tursiops truncates) Understanding of Human Gazing and Formatted: Highlight

Pointing: Knowing What and Where by Adam A. Pack from the dolphin institute of University of Hawaii

at Manoa and Louis M. Herman from Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory provides a third way of Commented [10]: Merge together
Formatted: Highlight
better understanding of dolphin intelligence by looking at how they understand human gestures.
Commented [11]: Merge together
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In this article, authors aim to test the understanding of dolphins of human pointing and head-
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gazing which are two main types of joint attention, a form of social cognition. In the introduction, Formatted: Highlight

Herman states that in 1980 he has an early discussion of diverse species on cognitive traits. Then in 1999

Herman and his colleagues first experiment that dolphins understand the indicative pointing. Therefore,

this research is based the previous research result of Herman. To be different from the one authors have Commented [13]: don't need to say how their different
summarize the source less and focus on their results
already done, they designed three experiments for this research. One is to identity whether dolphins Formatted: Highlight

could find the item by pointing of human; moreover, another is a step beyond the first one. This is to

test the ability of dolphins process symbolic instructions indicated by people’s head gazing. The last one

is the most developed which tries to investigate the understanding of geometry of human indicative

cues. The method part of this paper is much easier to be realized than most of scientific articles as the

provides a visual component in this section. The result reflects that one of the two dolphins being tested

had no difficulty in selecting the sample object which is indicated by the experimenter. However, for the

other two, authors state that further research would be necessary to examine the reliability of their

hypothesis.

All these three articles try to make a proof of the existence of cognition with respect to

dolphins; however, authors discuss several points about it, including the self-awareness, social behavior
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and interaction with humans and gesture. The combination of three sources gives the audience a

comprehensive view of the idea throughout recent findings.

The Figure in research of Pack and Herman use to give the audience a view of how their experiment

testing the joint attention of dolphins.

In conclusion, each of the papers being selected to be reviewed has their own uniqueness. The

first is a recent published paper which applies the data which are lately determined so the experiment is

more trustful due to the improve of test strategy and data collection. The second one which mainly
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covers synchrony of dolphins try to add a new variable to the previous research did by others.

Therefore, the researchers are aiming to improve the experiments used to be done and measure

whether the petting, the social behavior of dolphins will affect the old results or not. The last one which

is done by two well-known experts in the field of dolphin study is in the purpose to develop some new

idea which they did not consider before on their own research. To talk about the cognition of dolphins,

evidence from various domains of research demonstrate that dolphins have a level of cognition that is

close to the human’s and this hypothesis has been proved. As recent researches have done plenty of

experiments to determine the level of dolphin cognition which is close to what human beings have.

Therefore, the treatment of dolphins around world should be reconsider, such the dolphin hunting,

dolphin captivity and so on. Commented [14]: bridge seems to be lacking a sort of
conclusion; you can focus more on bringing it together:

1. introduction of problems good

2. use quotes to bring it together

Work Cited Commented [15]: you could use safina's quote for this
one

Connor, Richard C., et al. “Synchrony, social behaviour and alliance affiliation in Indian Ocean bottlenose

dolphins, Tursiops aduncus.” Animal Behaviour, vol. 72, no. 6, 2006, pp. 1371–1378.

Frohoff T, Marino L (2011) Towards a New Paradigm of Non-Captive Research on Cetacean Cognition. PLOS ONE

6(9): e24121.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0024121

Morrison, Rachel, and Diana Reiss. “Precocious development of self-Awareness in dolphins.” Plos One,

vol. 13, no. 1, Oct. 2018.

“March 2018.” Discover Magazine, discovermagazine.com/2016/jul-aug/animal-intelligence.

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Pack, Adam A., and Louis M. Herman. “The dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) understanding of human gazing

and pointing: Knowing what and where.” Journal of Comparative Psychology, vol. 121, no. 1, 2007, pp.

34–45.

Safina, Carl. Beyond words - what animals think and feel. Souvenir Press Ltd, 2016. Commented [16]: main idea is giving background
knowledge on the different cognitive capabilities of
dolphins
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