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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain

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Speaker 1: Stuff lorn Bolba bom here. Despite the prevailing belief that

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Speaker 1: humans dominate the animal kingdom when it comes to smarts,

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Speaker 1: we're actually ranked as the third smartest species on the planet,

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Speaker 1: according to author Douglas Adams in his series Hitchhiker's Guide

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Speaker 1: to the Galaxy. But joking aside, there is something to

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Speaker 1: be said for Douglas's idea, at least in terms of

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Speaker 1: the species his narrator ranks as second smartest dolphins. His

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Speaker 1: stories rank mice as first. We're pretty sure that doesn't

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Speaker 1: hold science water. But when you correct for differences in

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Speaker 1: body mass, dolphins brains, and the brains of bottlenose dolphins

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Speaker 1: in particular are pretty comparable to the brains of humans.

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Speaker 1: They even come in second in terms of relative mass,

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Speaker 1: above all other species. Their brains also have many similar

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Speaker 1: features that are frequently correlated with higher brain functions. Bottlenose

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Speaker 1: dolphins likely possessed at a language comprehension skills, making them

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Speaker 1: seemingly able to understand simple series of signed gestures, both

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Speaker 1: in their semantic and syntactic senses. Bottlenose dolphins can understand

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Speaker 1: that generalized words like ball can refer to sets of

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Speaker 1: objects with similar characteristics. They could comprehend basic numerical concepts,

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Speaker 1: and they're able to understand and react to questions about

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Speaker 1: objects outside of their immediate vicinity. They process information received

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Speaker 1: both acoustically and visually, allowing them to recognize scenes presented

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Speaker 1: on a television screen, something that chimpanzees must be trained

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Speaker 1: extensively in order to do. The dolphins can then respond

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Speaker 1: to the image with accuracy comparable to human response levels,

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Speaker 1: even when the visual cues are delivered abstractly. Dolphins also

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Speaker 1: comprehend pointing, again something that chimpanzees typically struggle with. Considering

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Speaker 1: that dolphins don't have arms, this ability is perhaps all

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Speaker 1: the more razing, although researchers suspect the dolphins experience with

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Speaker 1: echolocation prepares them for the concept. Dolphins also seemed to

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Speaker 1: demonstrate self awareness by using mirrors to recognize and inspect

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Speaker 1: marks placed inconspicuously on their bodies, and they demonstrate a

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Speaker 1: perception for and memory of recent activities, exhibited by their

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Speaker 1: ability to either repeat or choose new behaviors to perform

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Speaker 1: as directed by trainers. Dolphins are excellent mimics both vocally

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Speaker 1: and behaviorally. Interestingly, they're able not only to imitate each other,

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Speaker 1: but humans as well, meaning that they can map their

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Speaker 1: body shapes onto ours using equivalent portions, such as tails

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Speaker 1: in the place of legs. Bottlenose dolphins have also been

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Speaker 1: known to teach each other new tricks. For example, and

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Speaker 1: injured dolphin was taught to tail walk while recuperating in captivity.

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Speaker 1: After release, it began passing the technique onto other wild dolphins.

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Speaker 1: In another case, dolphins demonstrated their adaptive problems all in

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Speaker 1: capabilities by picking up the habit of swimming with sea

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Speaker 1: sponges on their snouts, which armored them against the prick

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Speaker 1: of spiny fish. A third interesting scenario, albeit back in

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Speaker 1: the lab, allowed bottlenose dolphins to choose and I don't

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Speaker 1: know option during a difficult test. When the dolphins selected

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Speaker 1: that option, they were likely considering their own thought process.

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Speaker 1: This indicates the cognitive concept known as meta cognition, which

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Speaker 1: some consider an indicator of self awareness and higher consciousness.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Jessica Kuthman and produced by

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Speaker 1: Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other

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Speaker 1: topics that would surely say so long, and thanks for

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Speaker 1: all the fish if they had the opportunity to visit

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Speaker 1: how stuffworks dot com. Brain stuff It's production of iHeart

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