Part 3

Genus: _Monodon monocerus_: Narwhal or Sea Unicorn. Arctic seas south of the ice-field. The male is characterized by an immense tusk, sometimes 9 feet long, projecting like a spear from the left side of the bluntly-rounded muzzle. The tusk is spirally grooved, and is the source of the horn of the unicorn of heraldry. Mottled in color, and about 18 feet long.

Genus: _Delphinapterus leucas_: The White Whale or Beluga. Resembles the Narwhal in size, shape, and habitat, but the tusk is absent.

Family Delphinidae

Genus _Globiocephala_

_G. melas_: Pilot Whale or Black-Fish or Ca’ing Whale. Temperate or tropical seas. Rounded head with dorsal fin. Takes its name from the fact that one whale or pilot leads the way of the sometimes huge schools; about 25 feet.

Genus _Orcinus_

_O. orca_: Killer Whale or Grampus. All seas. With a high dorsal fin and black and white coloring, aggressively bold and carnivorous, with singular cunning and intelligence. Fourteen seals and thirteen porpoises have been found in the stomach of a male measuring 21 feet. The male is usually about 30 feet in length.

Genus _Pseudorca_

_P. crassidens_: The False Killer Whale or Lesser Killer Whale. All seas.

FOOTNOTES

[1]Among the many well-known figures of classical mythology said to have been saved by dolphins from the sea are Eikadios, Enalos, Koiranos, Phalanthos, Taras, etc. In many other cases the corpses were brought ashore by a dolphin, which then expired on reaching land (similarly, with minor variations, was this so with Palaimon or Melikertes, Dionysios and Hermias of Iasos, Hesiod, and the boys already referred to from Baiae and Naupaktos). Similar incidents reappear in the writings of the hagiographers. Saints Martinianos of Kaisareia, Kallistratos of Carthage, Basileios the younger of Constantinople, were each saved from a watery grave by a couple of dolphins. The corpse of Saint Loukianos of Antioch was brought ashore by a large dolphin, which then expired on the sand. See Klement, _Arion_, 1-64, and Usener, _Die Sintfluthsagen_, 138-180.

[2]Euhemerus (_circa_ second half of the fourth century B.C.) attempted a rationalistic explanation of the mythology prevailing in his time. The theory he propounded, in his novel of travel, _Sacred History_, was simply an extension of the current skeptical-scientific attitude to matters which until that time had been accepted without question. That theory was that the gods were merely men who because of their great exploits or beneficence had been accorded divine honors. In Crete, coming upon the remains of a tomb bearing the name of Zeus, Euhemerus argued that even Zeus had probably been no more than a great conqueror, who died and was buried in Crete, and afterwards deified. This creditable anthropological attempt to historicize mythology, though it failed to convince, is nevertheless worthy of great respect. As A. B. Cook wrote, if Euhemerus said that Zeus was a Cretan king when he ought to have said that Cretan kings played the part of Zeus, it is a pardonable error. (_Zeus_, I, 662.)

[3]“Saved by a Porpoise,” _Natural History_, LVIII (1949), 385-386.

[4]Winthrop N. Kellogg, _Porpoises and Sonar_, University of Chicago Press, 1962, p. 14.

[5]George G. Goodwin, “Porpoise—Friend of Man?” _Natural History_, LVI (1947), 337.

[6]F. Bruce Lamb, “The Fisherman’s Porpoise,” _Natural History_, LXIII (1954), 231-2.

REFERENCES

Aelian. _On the Characteristics of Animals._ Bk. VI, 15. Aesop. _Fables._ “The Monkey and the Dolphin.” Alpers, Antony. _Dolphins: the Myth and the Mammal._ Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961. Anderson, John. _Anatomical and Zoological Researches: Comprising an Account of the Zoological Results of the Two Expeditions to Western Yunnan._ London: Bernard Quaritch, 1878. Apollodorus. _The Library._ III, 5, 3. Apostolides, Nicholas. _La Pêche en Grèce._ Athens, 1907. Aristotle. _History of Animals._ Bk. I, 5; II, 1, 13, 15; III, 1, 7, 20; IV, 8-10; V, 5; VI, 12; VIII, 2, 13; IX, 48. Biedermann, Paul. _Der Delphin in der dichtenden und bildenden Phantasie der Griechen und Roemer._ Halle, 1881. Cook, Arthur B. _Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion._ Cambridge, Eng.: The University Press, 1914, vol. 1, p. 662. Douglas, Norman. _Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology._ London: Chapman and Hall, 1928, p. 161. Euhemerus. _Sacred History._ Fairholme, J. K. E. “The Blacks of Moreton Bay, and the Porpoises,” _Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London_, XXIV (1856), 353-354. Goodwin, George G. “Porpoise—Friend of Man?” _Natural History_, LVI (1947), 337. _The Greek Anthology._ Herodotos. _History._ Clio I, 23-24. Hill, Ralph N. _Window in the Sea._ New York: Rinehart, 1956. Kellogg, Winthrop N. _Porpoises and Sonar._ Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. Klement, Carl. _Arion._ Vienna, 1898. Lamb, F. Bruce. “The Fisherman’s Porpoise,” _Natural History_, LXIII (1954), 231-232. Llano, George A. _Airmen Against the Sea._ Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama; Arctic, Desert, Tropic Information Center [1955 or 1956], p. 74. Longman, Heber. “New Records of Cetacea,” _Memoirs of the Queensland Museum_, VIII (1926), 266-278. Longus, Cornificius. _De Etymis Deorum._ Lucian. _Marine Dialogues._ 8. Lycophron. _Alexandra._ Nonnus Panopolitanus. _Dionysiaca._ VI, 265-266. Norman, John R., and Fraser, F. C. _Giant Fishes, Whales, and Dolphins._ London: Putnam, 1937. Oppian. _Halieutica._ I, 649-654, 1089; V, 422, 519f. Ovid. _Metamorphoses._ III, 1, 202. Pliny the Elder. _Natural History._ IX, 8, 24-28. Pliny the Younger. _Letters._ IX, 23. Plutarch. _On the Cleverness of Animals._ Porphyry. _De Abstinentia._ III, 16. Rabinovitch, Melitta. _Der Delphin in Sage und Mythos der Griechen._ Dornach: Hybernia-Verlag, 1947. “Saved by a Porpoise,” _Natural History_, LVIII (1949), 385-386. Schmidt, Bernhard. _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen._ Leipzig, 1871. Servius. _Commentarii in Vergilii Aeneidos._ III, 332. Stebbins, Eunice B. _The Dolphin in the Literature and Art of Greece and Rome._ Menasha, Wisconsin: Banta Publishing Co., 1929. Usener, Hermann. _Die Sintfluthsagen._ Bonn: F. Cohen, 1899. Xenophon. _Anabasis._ V, 4, 28.

_Modern Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises, as Challenges to Our Intelligence_

By JOHN C. LILLY

The intelligence of whales has been the subject of speculation by writers since Ancient Greece.[1][2] The discovery of the large brains of the Cetacea in the eighteenth century led to inevitable comparisons of these brains to those of the humans and of the lower primates. The winds of scholarly opinions concerning the whales have anciently blown strongly for high intelligence but during later centuries shifted strongly against high intelligence. At the time of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) the dolphin, for example, was held in high esteem, and many stories of the apparently great abilities of these animals were current.[2] By the time of Plinius Secundus (A.D. 23-79) the beginning of a note of skepticism was introduced. Plinius said, “I should be ashamed to tell the story were it not that it has been written about by ... others.”[1]

In the middle ages the strong influence of religious philosophy on thinking placed Man in a completely separate compartment from all other living creatures, and the accurate anatomy of the whales was neglected. This point is illustrated by Figure 1, published in the 1500’s in _Historia Animalium_ by Konrad Gesner. This was apparently a baleen whale. It has two tubes which apparently symbolize the double blowhole of the Mystacocetae. There is no modern whale known that has such tubes sticking out of the top of his head. There is a huge eye above the angle of the jaw. All whales have the eye at or near the posterior angle of the jaw. The eye is very much smaller than the one shown here. A print published in 1598 of the anatomy of these animals is shown in Figure 2. The drawing of the male organ is accurate (apparently it was measured with a walking stick), but the eye is too large and is misplaced.

These pictures illustrate very well man’s most common relationship to the whale, which has continued to the present day. For commercial reasons man continues to exploit these creatures’ bodies.

It was not until the anatomical work of Vesalius and others that the biological similarities and differences of man and other mammals were pointed out. It was at this time that the investigation of man’s large and complex brain began.

All through these periods intelligence and the biological brain factors seemed to be completely separated in the minds of the scholars. At the times of the Greeks and the Romans there was little, if any, link made between brain and mind. Scholars attributed man’s special achievements to other factors than excellence of brain structure and its use.

After the discovery of man’s complicated and complex brain and the clinical correlation between brain injury and effects on man’s performance, the brain and mental factors began to be related to one another. As descriptions of man’s brain became more and more exact and clinical correlations increased sufficiently in numbers, new investigations on the relationships between brain size and intelligence in _Homo sapiens_ were started. The early work is summarized by Donaldson.[3]

In the late 1700’s and the early 1800’s the expansion of the whaling industry offered many opportunities for examination of these interesting mammals. Figures 3 and 4 are dramatic examples of the state of the industry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

One of the earliest drawings of the complex brain of one of the cetacea is that of Gottfried Reinhold Trediramus in 1818 (Fig. 5). This is an anterior view of the brain of the common porpoise _Phocaena phocaena_. This is one of the earliest pictures showing the complexity of the fissuration and the large numbers of gyri and sulci.

By the year 1843 the size of the brain of whales was being related to the total size of the body. The very large brains of the large whales were reduced in importance by considering their weight in a ratio to the weight of the total body. This type of reasoning was culminated with a long series of quantitative measures published by Eugène Dubois (_Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris_, Ser. 4, VIII [1897], 337-376).

Descriptions from those of Hunter and Tyson onwards agree that, in absolute size, the brains are as large and larger than those of man. All were agreed that the smaller whales, i.e., the dolphins and porpoises, have very large brains with relation to their body size. It was argued, therefore, with respect to the dolphin, “this creature is of more than ordinary wit and capacity.” (Robert Hamilton, _The Natural History of the Ordinary Cetacea or Whales_, p. 66, in Sir William Jardine, _The Naturalist’s Library_, volume 7, Edinburgh, 1843.)

Tiedemann’s drawings of the brain of _Delphinus delphis_ and of _Delphinus phocaena_ were published by H. G. L. Reichenbach in his _Anatomia Mammalium_ in 1845. The four drawings are shown in Figure 6. These drawings show the improved awareness of the complexities of these large brains in regard to cerebral cortex, the cerebellum, and the cranial nerves. Correlations between the structure of this brain and the behavior of the animal possessing it, were (and are) woefully lacking. The only behavioral accounts were those of whalers hunting these animals. Hunters tend to concentrate on the offensive and defensive maneuvers of the animal, and can give useful information for other kinds of evaluation of the animal’s behavior and presumed intelligence.

In 1787 John Hunter, writing in the _Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London_ (LXXVII, 423-424), said the following: “The size of the Brain differs much in different genera of this tribe, and likewise in the proportion it bears to the bulk of the animal. In the Porpoise, I believe, it [the proportion] is largest, and perhaps in that respect comes nearest to the human....

“The brain is composed of cortical and medullary substances, very distinctly marked; the cortical being, in colour, like the tubular substance of a kidney; the medullary, very white. These substances are nearly in the same proportion as in the human brain.... The thalami themselves are large; the corpora striata small; the crura of the fornix are continued along the windings of the ventricles, much as in the human subject.”

Flatau and Jacobsohn in 1899 wrote, “the large brain of the Porpoise is one of the smallest in the Cetacean Order in which the organ attains to a much greater absolute size than any other.”

In 1902 G. Elliot Smith wrote of the brain of a species of dolphin called “Delphinus tursio” (which may be the modern _Tursiops truncatus_): “This brain is larger and correspondingly richer in sulci than that of the porpoise: but the structure of the two organs is essentially the same.” His drawings are shown in Figures 7 and 8. He said further, “the brains of the Beluga and all the dolphins closely resemble that of the porpoise.”

Smith summarizes the discussion of the huge size of the whale’s brain. “The apparently extraordinary dimensions of the whale’s brain cannot therefore be considered unusual phenomena, because this enormous extent of the cerebral cortex to receive and ‘store’ impressions of such vast sensory surfaces becomes a condition of survival of the animal.

“The marvelous complexity of the surface of the cerebrum is the direct result of its great size. In order, apparently, that the cerebral cortex may be efficiently nourished and at the same time be spared to as great a degree as possible the risk of vascular disturbances [such as would be produced by large vessels passing into it], its thickness does not appreciably increase in large animals. [He then quotes Dubois’ figures showing that the whale’s cortex is the same thickness as that of the human.] Such being the case, it naturally results that the increased bulk of cortex in large animals can only be packed by becoming thrown into increasing number of folds, separated by corresponding large number of sulci.”[4]

In regard to communication between individual whales, Scammon in 1874 wrote the following: “It is said that the Cachalots [Sperm Whales] are endowed with the faculty of communicating with each other in times of danger, when miles ... distant. If this be true, the mode of communication rests instinctively within their own contracted brains.”[5] Let us not forget that Scammon was talking about the mammal with the largest known brain on this planet. Instinct as the sole cause of communication with a brain this size seems rather improbable. This brain is not any longer considered “contracted.” Both of these statements illustrate an authoritative view of that time. If one peruses the paper by Tokuzo Kojima, “On the Brain of the Sperm Whale” (in the _Scientific Reports_ of the Whales Research Institute, Tokyo, VI, 1951, 49-72), one can obtain a modern clear view of this brain. The largest one that he obtained (from a 49-foot sperm whale) was 9,200 grams. The average weight of the sixteen brains presented in his paper is 7,800 grams for average body lengths of 50 feet. (The brain weight per foot of body length varied from 118 to 187 grams per foot, averaging 157; man’s ratio averages about 250 grams per foot.)

In the literature of the time of Scammon, the scholars failed to give us new information about the behavior of cetacea. There seems to have been a distinctly ambivalent attitude towards these animals which is continued today. This point of view can be summarized as follows: the whale is a very large animal with a brain larger than that of man. This brain is the result of the huge growth of its body. All of this large brain is needed to control a large body. Because these tasks are so demanding, there is not enough brain substance left for a high degree of intelligence to develop. Thus the large brain cannot give the degree of intellectual capability that man has.

As an example of man’s attitudes to cetaceans, consider the case of the U. S. Fisheries Bureau _Economic Circular_ No. 38, of November 6, 1918, by Lewis Radcliffe, entitled “Whales and Porpoises as Food.” Roy Chapman Andrews is quoted as saying that hump-backed whale meat is the best of the larger cetaceans but that porpoise and dolphin meat is even better eating than that of the larger whale. The composition of the whale meat is given as 30% protein, 6% fat, and less than 2% ash. From a hump-back whale one obtains six tons of meat, from a Sei Whale, five tons, and from a Finback, eight tons. Directions are given to remove the connective tissue between the blubber and the muscle to avoid the oily taste. For those who are interested, the paper includes twenty-two whale meat recipes and ten porpoise meat recipes.

It can well be imagined, if we ever do communicate with whales, dolphins, or porpoises, the kind of reception that this sort of literature will receive from the cetaceans.

The limited point of view of the whales as “dumb beasts” neglects the adaptations that have taken place in non-mammalian forms with very much smaller brains but with comparable bulk of body. The 60-foot whale shark, a plankton eater, and like the rest of the sharks a water-breather, has a bulk of body comparable to that of the larger whales. It has a large brain cavity but a very small brain in a small part of this large cavity. (It is very difficult to find the weight of these brains to compare with that of the cetacea and other mammals.) The problem of brain weight versus body weight versus intelligence is most clearly expressed by Gerhardt von Bonin in his paper in the _Journal of General Psychology_ (1937).[6] He gives a very extensive table for mammals, their brain weight, their body weight, and the values of 2 parameters for their specification. He then states, “it is clear from all that has been said above that the figures given here are nothing but a description of facts, a description which, in the mathematical sense of the term, is the ‘best’ one. It does not pretend to make any enunciation about the relation of intelligence and brain weight. For that purpose we need a much broader psychological basis than we have at present.

“Former attempts to analyze the relations between body weight and brain weight suffer from three deficits: (1) they presuppose a correlation between intelligence and brain weight, (2) they make suppositions about the intelligence of animals which are unproven, and (3) they are based on a conception of cortical function which can no longer be considered valid.... There is a close correlation between the logarithms of brain and body weight, and this co-relation is linear. Brain weight increases as the 0.655th power of body weight. The value of the cephalization co-efficient k differs from species to species. _Whether or not this is an indication of the intelligence of animals must be left to the psychologists to answer._”

One of the problems that the whales have, as compared to, say, the large shark, is breathing air while living in the sea. This requires that these animals reach the air-water interface relatively frequently—at least every one hour and a half for the bottlenose whale (_Hyperoödon_), three-quarters of an hour for the Sperm Whale (_Physeter catadon_), and every six minutes for _Tursiops truncatus_. This puts very stringent requirements on the relationship of the whales to other events within the sea. Each whale must know where the surface of the sea is at each instant and compute his future actions so that when he does run out of air he is near the surface. He is essentially a surface-to-depth and depth-to-surface oriented animal. He must travel at high speed at times in order to recapture enough air to continue whatever he is doing under the surface. This means that he must calculate his chances of obtaining a good breath of air during rain storms and similar situations. He can be violently thrown around at the surface unless he comes up in the trough rather than at the crest of the wave. Such calculations probably require an exercise of something more than just “instinct.”

Water-breathing animals, on the other hand, have no need for such calculations. If the surface gets rough, they move downward and stay there. The required maneuvers are very much simpler and the amount of computation is very much less.

This requirement for the whales implies that the information coming from every one of the senses, not just the skin, needs to be correlated very rapidly and in complex patterning to allow the animals to predict their future course safely and accurately. It also requires the use of large amounts of information from memory.

The predators of the sea, other than the whales themselves, make life in the sea rather a complex business for mammals. The very large sharks can and do attack whales, dolphins, and porpoises. At times such attacks are by overwhelming numbers of sharks on a relatively small number of dolphins. All of the older animals in our experience have at least one shark bite on them—the younger animals are protected by the older ones and most of them are not so dramatically scarred.

The whales, in turn, must track their own prey in order to obtain food. With the single known exception of _Orca_, none of their predators are air-breathers. In general, the whales’ diet consists of fish, squid, or other water-breathing organisms of the sea.

A scientific assessment of the position of these animals in the competitive environment of the sea is not yet fully evaluated quantitatively. Any pronouncement of the requirements in regard to new complex adaptations to new complicated situations and hence the evaluation of intelligence of these animals at this time is premature and presumptuous. The whole issue of the meaning and the use of these large brains is still very much unknown. As I say in _Man and Dolphin_,[7] I am espousing a plea for an open-minded attitude with respect to these animals. It would be presumptuous to assume that we at the present time can know how to measure their intelligence or their intellectual capacity. The usual behavioral criteria used in evaluation of intelligence of other animals are obviously inapplicable to a mammal living in the sea. As McBride and Hebb[8] so clearly stated, they cannot place the dolphin in any sort of intellectual comparative intelligence scale; they did not know the appropriate experimental questions to ask in order to compare the dolphins with the chimpanzees, for example. Comparing a handed-mammal with a flippered-mammal, each of which lives in an entirely separate and distinctive environment, is a very difficult intellectual task even for _Homo sapiens_.