Dolphins and whales are dumber than goldfish and don't have the know-how to match a rat, new research from South Africa shows.
For years, humans have assumed the large brains of dolphins meant the mammals were highly intelligent.
Paul Manger from Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand, however, says it is not intelligence that created the dolphin super-brain -- it's the cold.
To survive underwater, these warm-blooded animals developed brains that have a lot of insulating material -- called glia -- but not too many neurons, the gray stuff that counts for reasoned thinking.
The same goes for whales because they share the dolphins' brain composition, he said.
Uh Oh, another animal rights propaganda myth bites the dust. The argument has been that since these animals have brains as large as ours, they are really just some kind of fish people, equal to us in every way. Bah! This was then used as a way of enacting draconian animal rights legislation all around the world. Remember that Star Trek episode where they saved the whales? Even though I am a Star Trek fan, this kind of pseudo-science has been used to bludgeon pet owners all over the world.
Why can’t we be satisfied that an animal is just an animal, and that is OK? Is this just a way for those who want “something more” to invent their own gods, because they don’t want to accept that God really exists? I think so.
For years, humans have assumed the large brains of dolphins meant the mammals were highly intelligent.
Paul Manger from Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand, however, says it is not intelligence that created the dolphin super-brain -- it's the cold.
To survive underwater, these warm-blooded animals developed brains that have a lot of insulating material -- called glia -- but not too many neurons, the gray stuff that counts for reasoned thinking.
The same goes for whales because they share the dolphins' brain composition, he said.
Uh Oh, another animal rights propaganda myth bites the dust. The argument has been that since these animals have brains as large as ours, they are really just some kind of fish people, equal to us in every way. Bah! This was then used as a way of enacting draconian animal rights legislation all around the world. Remember that Star Trek episode where they saved the whales? Even though I am a Star Trek fan, this kind of pseudo-science has been used to bludgeon pet owners all over the world.
Why can’t we be satisfied that an animal is just an animal, and that is OK? Is this just a way for those who want “something more” to invent their own gods, because they don’t want to accept that God really exists? I think so.
No comments:
Post a Comment