information on dolphin intelligence

I would love to have a chat with our dolphin neighbours that reside here on Dolphin Bay, Bocas del Toro, Panama, but I’m still learning Spanish, so dolphin language will have to wait awhile. I will still be spending time with them - watching, marvelling and learning.

Here is more learning you can do about dolphin intelligence.

Because dolphins are highly social and vocalize among themselves with a wide range of sounds, it has been conjectured that they might possess an almost human like intelligence. In the 1950s and ’60s the American neurologist John Lilly conducted well publicized experiments based on this concept, in which he attempted to communicate with dolphins in their own “language,” but other scientists rejected his work as poorly documented and lacking scientific validity. Though with recent discoveries suggesting that dolphins have names for each other and call out to specific individual dolphins there may be much more to learn regarding John Lilly’s theory of a dolphin language.

Because of the ability of dolphins to learn and perform complex tasks in captivity, their continuous communications with one another, and their ability, through training, to approximate the sounds of a few human words, some investigators have suggested that the animals might be capable of learning a true language and communicating with humans.

Most researchers still agree that dolphins exhibit a level of intelligence greater then that of dogs and even comparable to that of some primates–but not human beings.

My own opinion is that they are a damn sight smarter than us - I don’t see dolphins destroying their only habitat… that’s only us doing it - to ours and theirs.