Baudelaire
498 mots
2 pages
This documentary aims to observe dophins in their own environment and their behaviour. Dolphins are sea mammals, they have one of the largest brain compared to their body in the animal kingdom, they are playful, sociable, intelligent and they live in complex societies.In addition their vocabulary has sixteen words and they need to deal with group competitions.Researchers made few tests to analise them: the first test involved two dophins observed in a laboratory, the task was to select some objects which were placed in a closed box,among these there were a bowl, a cross and a flower pot.
As a result of their adaptation to the underwater world, they could distinguish them , so this raised the hipotesis that they had a sixth sense.
It’s clear that they have an ability that few mammals have, by emitting high frequency sounds and analising the echoes, they create a mental picture and see with sound.
Then the scientists went to the Bahamas and discovered the dolphins become invisible under the sand and direct the sound into a directional beam, but according to the speaker this is not a sign of intelligence.
They went back into the wild and made another test to verify if they could categorize and recognize similarity between objects, the result was positive and not only did they recognize the objects but it was stuff that they had never seen before.
This is a clear sign of intelligence.
What about similarity with animals? Dolphins can imitate our movements and have no difficulty in relating body parts of human beings.
Back to captivity a mother and her baby dolphin were taken as an example, the mother uses a practical approach to teach to feed, the baby learns by imitating the mother.
Through mimic these mammals pass on the information and learn by copying each other, they use clicks to keep in touch and communicate by body postures.
Another problem raised the question about the creativity of the dolphins, so scientists made another test