Are dolphins stupid?

[Thomas]

Point being - I doubt that the Clever Hans effect is not being taken into account by those biologists studying Dolphin intelligence and "language" abilities.

I don't know the details of that experiment, but usually a mask isn't enough to account for the Clever Hans effect. You have use a questioner who's unaware of the answer to eliminate subtle body language issues (as that was exactly what Pfungst discovered when he examined the Hans "calculations") and at best, isolate the animal completely from an audience and the qustioners.

But as I said, I haven't looked into dolphin experiments, it just wouldn't surprise me that many of the experiments doesn't account for this. Especially those carried out by new age hippie trainers who wants to prove dolphins super special in front of an audience.

 

[The Atheist]

cats just stare at your finger

Now there's the smartest animal, right there - the domestic cat.

A life of luxury, fed to death, and give back exactly nothing. If they're cold, they'll sit on your lap and purr, if they don't want you sitting in their chair, they'll scratch your legs to shreds. Take, take, take, the perfect foil for humans.

 

[andyandy]

i suppose his argument is over the use of brain-to-body ratios as a measure of intelligence.....

While there is no physiological characteristic that unequivocally indicates intelligence in animals, scientists naturally focus on brain size and structure. Absolute brain size does appear to correlate to intelligence[1], but it is a crude measure, given that animal species vary in size over many orders of magnitude. Brain-to-body ratio is considered a more precise benchmark, particularly for species that are otherwise similar in size (the larger the species, the smaller the brain-to-body mass ratios as a general rule). Comparing a land-based species and water-based species introduces a further complication because their habitats make hugely differing demands. Even accepting these caveats, dolphin brain characteristics appear positive indicators of advanced intelligence.

Bottle-nosed dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) have an absolute brain mass of 1500-1700 grams. This is slightly greater than that of humans (1300-1400 grams) and about four times that of chimpanzees (400 grams) [2].
The brain-to-body ratio in dolphins is less than half that of humans: 0.9% versus 2.1%.[3] This comparison appears more favourable if we leave aside the large amount of blubber (15-20% of mass) dolphins require for insulation. Humans and dolphins rate first and second, respectively, for animal brain-to-body ratio, among all animals weighing over one kilogram.
At birth, dolphins have a brain mass that is 42.5% of an adult dolphin's brain mass (in comparison with 25% for human newborns). By eighteen months, the brain mass of Bottle-nosed dolphins is roughly 80% of that of an adult dolphin. Human beings generally do not achieve this figure until the age of three or four (ibid).
Regarding brain structure and the complexity of neural connections, dolphins continue to compare favourably to humans.

A cerebral cortex 40% larger than human beings, with "wrinkles" of near equivalent complexity [4].
A similarly developed frontal lobe (ibid).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_intelligence

and he suggests an alternative reason for large brain size in dolphins.....
which i guess is fine, but to back up this hypothosis, he seems to be ignoring rather a lot of evidence to the contrary on dolphin intelligence.....

 

[valis]

Intelligence is a pretty complex thing. It takes more than one test to determing whether an animal is intelligent or not...... and even then, it's all going to come down to how we define intelligence.

This is an animal that is highly successful at surviving in it's environment. Why would we attempt to compare it to an animal that survives in an entirely different environment? If you were a dolphin and you thought jumping into the air was going to get you someplace else, the other dolphins would probably think you were incredibly dim. The example the guy gives is not compelling at all.

Right, in fact the only way to know for sure would be to have them take a test designed by a dolphin.

 

[Dave1001]

i suppose his argument is over the use of brain-to-body ratios as a measure of intelligence.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_intelligence

and he suggests an alternative reason for large brain size in dolphins.....
which i guess is fine, but to back up this hypothosis, he seems to be ignoring rather a lot of evidence to the contrary on dolphin intelligence.....

But I wonder how much of that evidence is tainted by Clever Hans Effect?

 

[Cuddles]

The big problem is how you define intelligence. This guy seems to look at only one aspect of behaviour, and one that dolphins would almost never need in real life (why would a dolphin ever need to jump over a partition?). Of course animals evolved to run around little obsticle courses (lucky devils) will be better at this. Since there is no generally accepted definition of intelligence for humans, trying to apply the same non-existant definition to other animals is just silly.

There is no doubt that dolphins live in highly complex and evolving social groups (as opposed to genetic groups like ants). This would imply that they are at least as intelligent as other animals that live like this, such as cats, dogs and many primates. I suspect most of the differences between species will be in what the tests are designed to find. If a test involves picking up and using a tool, primates will win because they have evolved to be able to do this, if a test involves swimming through a hoop, dolphins will win.

 

[andyandy]

But I wonder how much of that evidence is tainted by Clever Hans Effect?

well, not all of it

there's certainly some indications of intelligence from observations.....

Use of tools
As of 2005, scientists have observed limited groups of bottle nose dolphins around the Australian Pacific using a basic tool. When scavenging for food on the sea floor, many of these dolphins were seen tearing off pieces of sponge and wrapping them around their "bottle nose" to prevent abrasions; illustrating yet another complex cognitive process thought to be limited to the great apes.[8]

field studies relating to dolphin and cetacean cognition are also relevant to the issue of intelligence, including those proposing tool use, culture, fission-fusion social structure (including tracking alliances and other cooperative behavior), acoustic behavior (bottlenosed dolphin signature whistles, sperm whale clicks, orca pod vocalizations), foraging methods (partial beaching, cooperation with human fishermen, herding fish into a ball, etc.).

and there's been plenty of research done in labs etc. It's not enough to dismiss all human-animal research with "clever hans".....if you want to test the interactions of social animals then in many cases some level of trainer-animal rapport is necessary....and any scientist worth his salt is aware of the problem - and tries to ensure proceedures to overcome this....if you're suggesting that all (or most?) lab data on animal intelligence is tainted (and therefore should be dismissed?) then i'd like to see your evidence.....

lab data.....

Whilst there is little evidence for dolphin language, experiments have shown that they can learn human sign language. Akeakamai, a bottle nosed dolphin, was able to understand both individual words and basic sentences like "touch the frisbee with your tail and then jump over it" (Herman, Richards, & Wolz 1984).

Examples of cognitive abilities investigated in the dolphin include concept formation, sensory skills, and the use of mental representation of dolphins. Such research has been ongoing since the late 1970s, and include the specific areas of: acoustic mimicry, behavioral mimicry (inter- and intra-specific), comprehension of novel sequences in an artificial language (including non-finite state grammars as well as novel anomalous sequences), memory, monitoring of self-behaviors (including reporting on these, as well as avoiding or repeating them), reporting on the presence and absence of objects, object categorization, discrimination and matching (identity matching to sample, delayed matching to sample, arbitrary matching to sample, matching across echolocation and vision, reporting that no identity match exists, etc.), synchronous creative behaviors between two animals, comprehension of symbols for various body parts, comprehension of the pointing gesture and gaze (as made by dolphins or humans), problem solving, echolocative eavesdropping, and more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_intelligence

 

[Thomas]

and there's been plenty of research done in labs etc. It's not enough to dismiss all human-animal research with "clever hans".....if you want to test the interactions of social animals then in many cases some level of trainer-animal rapport is necessary....and any scientist worth his salt is aware of the problem - and tries to ensure proceedures to overcome this....if you're suggesting that all (or most?) lab data on animal intelligence is tainted (and therefore should be dismissed?) then i'd like to see your evidence.....

I would like to add, that we shouldn't dismiss the possibility that these dolphins have a clean channel to the astral plane. I'm sure, that when we find the lost city of Atlantis on the bottom of the sea, then we'll realize that it was build by dolphins on close telepathic consultation with Sai Baba, the Greys and the Mayans.

 

[andyandy]

I would like to add, that we shouldn't dismiss the possibility that these dolphins have a clean channel to the astral plane. I'm sure, that when we find the lost city of Atlantis on the bottom of the sea, then we'll realize that it was build by dolphins on close telepathic consultation with Sai Baba, the Greys and the Mayans.

when you find some scientific evidence supporting the possibility let me know.....

you seem to be employing the old fundie logic....

find a possible flaw in scientific research

then conclude, having found a flaw, that this discredits the entire field, and proves something else entirely (eg. that god exists/the earth was made 6000 years ago/ID is true etc etc)

 

[Amapola]

Right, in fact the only way to know for sure would be to have them take a test designed by a dolphin.

Not at all. However, simply that saying a dolphin does not behave like a rat does not mean the dolphin is stupid.

 

[Dave1001]

well, not all of it

there's certainly some indications of intelligence from observations.....






and there's been plenty of research done in labs etc. It's not enough to dismiss all human-animal research with "clever hans".....if you want to test the interactions of social animals then in many cases some level of trainer-animal rapport is necessary....and any scientist worth his salt is aware of the problem - and tries to ensure proceedures to overcome this....if you're suggesting that all (or most?) lab data on animal intelligence is tainted (and therefore should be dismissed?) then i'd like to see your evidence.....

lab data.....





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_intelligence

Interesting. Well, it's not my field, but I'm sure that a lot of this type work will now be looked over and retested with a healthy skepticism for possible Hans effects. Which I'm sure is a good thing.

 

[Meffy]

Dave, you don't seriously suppose scientists have never heard of Clever Hans, do you? True, some researchers haven't taken enough precautions against skewing results. But just because it's new to you doesn't mean professionals haven't been aware of the pitfall all along. =9_9=

[edit] I recall reading "lively" exchanges over just this point in Popular Psychology -- I mean Psychology Today -- as far back as the early 1970s. News it ain't.

 

[drkitten]

Well, as I posted earlier, it would be one of the more spectacular cases of Hans effect skewing human perception of animal behavior and intelligence.

Well, that's kind of the point. Hans is well-known and well-understood and to not control for it is a sign of incompetence.

If I were given a paper to review on the subject of "Dolphin Intelligence" that didn't take into account the Clever Hans effect, I would reject it instantly on methodological grounds. That's up there with running an experiment with no control group or failure to blind or something. I can't imagine that I'm that much stricter than the rest of the community....

 

[kittynh]

Well, I wonder if the US NAVY knows it's probably all Clever Hans...

Their dolphin program is very top secret. It upsets the woos, and the Navy is on PETAs hit list (though PETA likes to hit easy targets, and the US Navy isn't that easy to attack).

I'm really on a KILLER DOLPHIN thing here!

But I am so tired of the "cute sweet almost like US" vibe people give animals. They are animals, and should be cared for and respected as such. I'd like to see a researcher organize his diving buddies to attack and kill sharks, by head butting them.

No research scientists tend to just look a lot like seals and get eaten.

 

[Jimbo07]

IBut as I said, I haven't looked into dolphin experiments, it just wouldn't surprise me that many of the experiments doesn't account for this. Especially those carried out by new age hippie trainers who wants to prove dolphins super special in front of an audience.

No strawmen here. Nope.

Given the preponderance of lore regarding dolphin intelligence, I was skeptical of this Manger's assertions, and was rewarded after only a small bit googling.

OTOH, it seems like some people here are willing to write off prior work based on this one article... because dolphin trainers are hippies.

 

[Dave1001]

Dave, you don't seriously suppose scientists have never heard of Clever Hans, do you? True, some researchers haven't taken enough precautions against skewing results. But just because it's new to you doesn't mean professionals haven't been aware of the pitfall all along. =9_9=

[edit] I recall reading "lively" exchanges over just this point in Popular Psychology -- I mean Psychology Today -- as far back as the early 1970s. News it ain't.

No, I don't "suppose scientists have never heard of Clever Hans", nor did I write that, Meffy. Nor did I write that the Clever Hans effect was "new to

", just the formal name for it. I hope that clears up your uncertainty on those points regarding my post.

 

[Dave1001]

Well, that's kind of the point. Hans is well-known and well-understood and to not control for it is a sign of incompetence.

If I were given a paper to review on the subject of "Dolphin Intelligence" that didn't take into account the Clever Hans effect, I would reject it instantly on methodological grounds. That's up there with running an experiment with no control group or failure to blind or something. I can't imagine that I'm that much stricter than the rest of the community....

Well, to what degree are we able to completely control for Clever Hans while testing animals for human-type social intelligence? From the articles I've read on this topic, I got the sense that even claims that primates have demonstrated human-type language abilities are controversial, in part because of difficulty to control for Clever Hans effect.

 

[Thomas]

Well, to what degree are we able to completely control for Clever Hans while testing animals for human-type social intelligence? From the articles I've read on this topic, I got the sense that even claims that primates have demonstrated human-type language abilities are controversial, in part because of difficulty to control for Clever Hans effect.

I was going to ask something similar, so I'll look forward to the reply.

 

[Big Les]

Are Dolphin's stupid?

Well, I've never seen one use a superfluous apostrophe, if that helps... (sorry!).

Meanwhile, further research has confirmed what we all knew from anecdotal observation.

 

[andyandy]

I was going to ask something similar, so I'll look forward to the reply.

It just requires a little thought....example.

Rico (born: December 1994) is a Border Collie dog who made the news after being studied by animal psychologist Juliane Kaminski from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig after his owners reported that he understood more than 200 simple words. Kaminski wrote in Science that these claims were justified: Rico retrieved an average of 37 (out of 40) items correctly. Rico could also remember items' names for four weeks after his last exposure.

Kaminski eliminated the Clever Hans effect using a strict protocol: the 200 items whose names Rico knew were randomly assigned to 20 sets of 10 items. While the owner waited with the dog in a separate room, the experimenter arranged a set of items in the experimental room and then joined the owner and the dog. Next, the experimenter instructed the owner to request that the dog bring two randomly chosen items (one after the other) from the adjacent room.

Rico's vocabulary was thus broadly comparable to that of language-trained apes, dolphins, sea lions, and parrots.

Rico also responded correctly to a new word with a single exposure, apparently using a canine equivalent of the fast mapping mechanism used by humans. Subject to the anti-Clever Hansing protocols above, a new object was placed alongside seven familiar objects. Rico was told to retrieve the new object, using a word that he had never heard before. Not only could Rico correctly retrieve the object, he also responded correctly to the name of the new object, presumably using a process of elimination.

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