So Who's the Smartest Mammal Now?

For as long as I can remember, there has been a small, but vocal, group who have regarded dolphins as the smartest mammals on earth because of their huge brains. The dolphin has been the mascot of many groups who share at least one trait: disdain and mistrust of human progress. You see, we homo sapiens sapiens haven't evolved physically very much over the last hundred thousand years or so, but look at all the wondrous, spectacular, even scary things we have accomplished technologically. Our dominance over animals and the environment cannot be denied, and we even prove it gloriously and ignominiously. Simply put, we cheated Nature. Well, at least that's the view by many environmentalists and animal rights activists. Their one shining example that we are not the top, that we are not unique, that we are not so special, was the dolphin's big brain.

Oh sure, the peaceful, playful dolphin image took a few hits when it was determined that the males gang-raped females, drowned the young of other males, and even ate other dolphin species when exerting territorialism, but hey, they still got bigger brains than we do. Perhaps this latest study can put the myth of the clever dolphin and his big brain to rest. According to the published paper, a scientist says dolphins are dimwits.

Read the whole thing, because Paul Manger, the South African neuroethologist, gives a very entertaining interview while explaining his findings which were just published in Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. Basically, the dolphin and whale brain is large so it can handle the cold temperatures and pressures of the ocean. Here's the best summary in the article:

Brains, he says, are made of neurons and glia. The latter create the environment for the neurons to work properly and producing heat is one of glia's functions. "Dolphins have a superabundance of glia and very few neurons ... The dolphin's brain is not made for information processing it is designed to counter the thermal challenges of being a mammal in water," Manger said.

Manger goes on to say that the dolphins perform so well in marine parks because of food-conditioned responses, which is actually indicative of a predator mind. If you've ever seen a dolphin pod take out a shark, then Manger's arguments resonate. It looks like Douglas Adams got it right when he wrote in his books that the lab rats were smarter than the dolphins. So, if dolphin's aren't the smartest mammals with those big brains, I wonder which species that leaves...