Publius' Forum

-By Warner Todd Huston

Hold on there, sports fans. I am not casting aspersions on those venerable gladiators of the gridiron residing in Miami, here. No, I am talking about the fishes. You know, the ones in the seas?

Turns out that animal rights psychos and those who want to ridiculously anthropomorphize our smiling beasts of the oceans are wrong. Dolphins aren't smart because of a brain as "big as a Human's".

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.

In order to survive underwater, these warm-blooded animals developed brains that have a lot of the insulating material – called glia – but not too many neurons, which is the grey stuff that counts for reasoned thinking.

Now THAT makes sense!

I have always looked askance at this claim that Dolphins are so smart. I mean, what evidence have we ever really SEEN that they are supposed to be so smart?

Have they ever really spoken to us in all those experiments we hear about? They certainly have never built a McDonald's or Starbuck's down in the gloomy deep, have they? Heck, I'd settle for a short note letting us know that they are doing OK.

Them Dolphins just never write anymore.

Of course, we have been told that Dolphins have an intricate social structure. We are told that they communicate quite effectively. We are told that they act in concert. We are told that these are the reasons they simply must be intelligent. That and the big brain they are known to have, that one that is as big as a Human's.

So what? Ants exhibit almost all those same traits (minus the big thinker). We don't seem to want to fit an ant for a cap and gown to go to the head of the class, now do we?

There's worse news for misguided humans that want to make Dolphins the Einsteins of the waters, unfortunately. It appears they are dumber than Goldfish.

That's right. Goldfish. You know, the bright, shimmering little fishy into who's bowl you threw a ping pong ball in order to win him and take him home -- much to your Mother's consternation -- at the Summer carnival you went to when you were a child? Did you know that your prize was smarter than Neptune's sages?

"Goldfish can solve problems that dolphins can't. When a goldfish jumps out of its bowl, it's thinking past its immediate environment. Dolphins don't have the cognitive leap," Mr. Manger said in a telephone interview Thursday.

OK, I have to admit that I don't understand that reasoning from the good Doctor, either. But it MUST say something about how stupid Dolphins are. After all, no Dolphin has yet come forward with high priced attorney in tow in order to sue the Doc for libel, right? Even if one did we could just throw him a dead Mackerel and he'd swim away forgetting all about his grievances. He IS an idiot, after all!

So, now we know. Dolphins are big nit-wits. Their big brains end up being like an insulated lunch bag keeping their tiny little intellect warm on those deep dives into the cold waters in which they live.

So, can we please stop with the Dolphins-are-so-smart blather we hear from animal rights extremists and Oceanographers so imbued with wishful thinking? Can we get beyond this claim that anything on the planet other than man has enough intelligence to make them rise above the brutish animal classes of our fair world? Can we stop pretending that animals deserve "rights" in the same way men do because they "feel" and "think" just like us?

... and can we stop having Sci-Fi novels with Dolphin characters thanking us for all the fish?

And, I am ready for any challenge on my stance should any upset Dolphin file suit. I am prepared to take my case to the highest courts in the land. I know some good attorneys should any upset Dolphin send a subpoena my way. I am sure they will come to my aid and blow away the arguments of any representative of the members of the Mensa of the deep. I might even hire a Goldfish.

But, just in case, I am going to put a bucket of dead Mackerel on ice.