Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Dolphin Intelligence

My graduate advisor recently reflected upon a once-in-a-lifetime dolphin encounter in a blog post titled "The Search for Intelligent Life". Way deep.

Photobucket

Check it out.

8 comments:

Catapulting Aaron said...

So long, and thanks for all the fish...

James Douglass said...

Aaron- Yep. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojydNb3Lrrs

G-42 said...

"What exactly do we mean by intelligent life?" - Indeed...

Kant died in 1804. To this day, people seem to have a hard time figuring out what he meant when exhorting us to have the courage to use the faculty of our reason („Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen.“). It's always nice to come across signs of intelligent life on the web (or really anywhere) - you just added another one of those for me.

Cheers - and hope you get some some good time on the water these days.

@Aaron - 42!

-Andreas

Ian Berger said...

James,

Nice appearance in “Windsurfing”. Looks like you had fun.

-Ian

Natural Patriot said...

Yo dude - thanks for the shout-out (if that is in fact the correct terminology). And congrats on the appearance in Windsurfing magazine. Now then, don't we have something to discuss . . .?

James Douglass said...

I know exactly what you're talking about, and it's ALMOST ready. I'm going to send it to you with all my edits still in "track changes" mode so you can see how I modified it in response to Kristin's comments.

DolphinGirl said...

Loved the article!
Post more like it - l am an aspiring marine biologist and want to help as much as l can!
Dolphins are the true intellegent beings on the planet!

James Douglass said...

DolphinGirl- Thanks for checking it out. :)

Sometimes we marine biologists roll our eyes when people get all mushy and lovey about "charistmatic megafauna" - dolphins, sharks, sea turtles, manatees, etc. Maybe because most of us study less-charismatic things like invertebrates, algae, and bacteria, and we think those things are important, too.

That said, there really is something special about being eye to eye with a beautiful, intelligent creature from the underwater world. And focusing on those special creatures is a good way to get people to care about saving that world.