Dolphins 2: This is where it starts
One of my earlier posts boasted dolphins as having the highest cognitive ability of all animals after humans. Also that they had sex for pleasure.
Recently, a scientist made the assertion that…well I’ll just show you.
Reiss and Marino will present their findings at a conference in San Diego, California next month. Also speaking at the conference will be professor of ethics and business at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Thomas White, who said the new research adds weight to his ideas that dolphins should be regarded as “non-human persons” with the right to be treated as individuals.
Yes, dolphins are people too.
No they aren’t. It’s silly to assert that, both for me and for the scientist. It does raise ethics questions though, where is the intelligence cut off point for treating other animals like our playthings? If pigs are found to be on a level near dolphins, do we stop eating them? (I won’t. I’ll go to jail for pork.)
I’m not sure what to make of this. There is a lot of information available stressing the intelligence of dolphins. In terms of evolution, I suppose it is possible that today’s dolphins are to future dolphins what Homo Habilis were to us (maybe even Homo Erectus). I’d love to see the next 500,000 years of their evolution. Maybe they grow opposable thumbs.
