Re. Do Bottle-nosed Dolphins Have Souls?
jo...@minster.york.ac.uk
writes:
>An incidental note: I read a study in college that described an
>experiment where the porpoises were taught to play tic-tac-toe.
>They picked up the game within minutes and became bored quickly
>when they discovered there was no win. This was not the
>remarkable part, however. Those who had been taught talked to
>those that hadn't when returned to the group (about 6 dolphins as
>I recall. The remaining dolphins then demonstrated that
>they already knew the game, then would "ask" to be returned to
>the group.
I (and, very probably, many others) would be very interested in
reading the original article. Have you a reference?
John A. Murdie
mathew
night, if you'll pardon the pun. In it, they showed a system where dolphins
had a keyboard they could punch with their snouts. The keyboard produced
whistling noises and also signalled to the humans at the poolside. The
dolphins used the keyboard to request objects that they wanted to play with,
but also spontaneously began to make the appropriate whistles before or
instead of pushing the buttons. This seems to indicate that dolphins
understand the concept of named objects.
Another experiment involved showing dolphins live and recorded videotapes of
themselves. It turns out that the dolphins can tell the difference between
live pictures of themselves and recorded ones, and respond differently. In
addition, the dolphins are able to understand that pictures on the screen can
represent things happening at a remote location; if you have two pools, and
show dolphins in one pool a TV picture of someone throwing fish into another
pool, they swim to the other pool. The program didn't mention whether
dolphins become sceptical if you lie to them.
mathew