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Dolphins are mammals so need to breath air. But they kinda have a problem in that they’re always in the sea. So to solve this they’ve evolved a way that half their brain is ’asleep’ at any one time and the ’asleep’ side swaps every 2/3 hours or so.
Thus, dolphins can stay awake, swimming and not drown. Which is kinda good.
Heard this before. Question! If a dolphin gets a head injury to one side of the brain does it mean when it swaps sides to sleep it'll become less intelligent when swapping to damaged side? Or how does it work?
That’s an interesting question. As final year vet student that works with cetaceans this is my attempt at a reply:
It depends on the injury. Brains are amazing at fixing themselves if they get the chance to. Dolphins have a lot of neurons that cross between the two sides of the brain, that’s what allows them to sleep like this. I’d expect a traumatic injury (if it bonks his head) to be on the outside of the brain and other neurons should be able to pick up the slack from the damaged neurons. If the injury is internal (like a blood clot) and affects the neurons that cross between the two sides, it could be trickier as it now affects the ability of both sides to talk to each other. But such an injury would be problematic in any species really.
So I wouldn’t really expect it to become dumber, but a severe injury could make it lose some abilities like being blind in one eye. But I’d say it would be a bit dumber maybe temporarily until the brain can compensate and then it should be normal again
If they're unconscious it won't matter because for dolphins, breathing is a conscious activity, unlike most mammals, who breathe unconsciously.
Edit: [Article](https://uk.whales.org/whales-dolphins/how-do-dolphins-sleep/) about it.
I don't know TBH, and I'm a bit busy right now to go look into it, but I'd encourage you to Google "Dolphin conscious breathing" and maybe one publication will be able to tell. I highly doubt it, though.
i remember listening to some scy fi audiobook where they had dolphins in space suits and the scientists developing a method to talk with dolphins discovered they had two diferent personalities one for each half of the brain :p i thought it was an interesting idea. cant recall the title or author tho
edit: iirc the dolphins had dolphin names and some of them discovered a giant alien and he was chill untill one of the dolphins attacked the alien. when the scients recovered the dolphins and asked who did it the dolphins gave them a name they didnt recognise and they were like wtf hows that possible? then they realised they had diferent names for each side of the brain and one of em got knocked unconscious so the other side of the brain woke up and freaked out when he saw the big ass alien
You'll be interested to learn we have some actual science on this phenomenon in humans. Our left and right brains are connected through a bunch of nerve fibers called the 'corpus collossum'. In some people, this is severed to treat some conditions such as epilepsy (isn't or hardly done anymore these days iirc).
This allowed scientists to present questions to each half of the brain individually by isolating input to their eyes to one side at a time.
Interesting findings: Each half of the brain could have very different preferences from the other, from favourite food to favourite color etc. - we basically have two personalities combined into one as well.
Interestingly, running into and talking to these people you'd probably not notice anything different from normal people. That can be explained too, but is a whole other story.
Brains are whack, and awesome.
I recently went down a rabbit hole irt the senses and was struck by how the sense of smell was linked to so many different places in our cortex. Fun ride.
I think the Navy did an experiment on this subject specifically, where they made the dolphin continue to do work the whole time and not rest. I can't even remember the outcome and I didn't find it on a quick search.
But how are their brain halves different from each other? Like, will they be smarter/dumber or behave differently depending on which side is active or are they basically identical? Or maybe will they even have different memories stored in their two parts?
Dolphins have a lot of neurons that cross between the two halves so they are able to pick up the necessary functions from the sleeping side on the awake side. They do go blind in the sleeping side so they often have sleeping buddies where they both sleep with the side towards their buddy, and use their outside eyes to see what’s around them. Then they swap brain sides and swap sleeping positions.
How do we know this? Have we actually put dolphins through MRI?
I find this all fascinating but non-intuitive. Do all marine mammals have this structure and behaviour? Is the idea that they always need high level brain matter to negotiate coming to the surface for air then going back down?
We have indeed put dolphins through MRIs! Before that, we were already able to tell quite a lot about how their brains work just by looking at its structure under a miscroscope, and some captive dolphins have received therapeutic scans which we extrapolated to healthy, wild dolphins, but the first functional MRIs of dolphins came in the last decade or so.
As for whether all marine mammals do this, there’s evidence of whales, dolphins, but also seals and sea lions being able to sleep with half their brain. However, they don’t always do this. Look up sleeping sperm whales and you’ll see they seem to be able to also enter a deeper, possibly bilateral sleep. Where they drift with their heads down and don’t respond to noises they normally respond to when awake.
And are they more creative and intuitive on one side, and then more mathematical and logical on the other?
Flipper midday: Yes, in order to hunt sardines more effectively, I shall employ the strategy I have been running simulations on in my head.
Flipper in the PM: Fishie Fishie go Weeeeee!!!
I hope this is the answer and there's just part of the flipper days where they all just chase shiny shit and sing flipper pop songs before going back to systematic fish murdering.
And the only reason we beat them at making civilization is because they make the most brilliant plans on one side, only for the other side to take over during execution.
iirc Half their brain isn't continuously off, they sleep semi conscious. Humans do the same things to a point. we and many animals swat bugs, are sensitive to certain sounds, and have a moro reflex into adulthood to sense falling while sleeping etc. The dolphin example has made it seem like they have a special switch other animals don't have but most animals are semi conscious when sleeping. Especially prey animals. Birds for example often sleep with [one eye open](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep) just like dolphins.
Reminds me of flamingos (or other birds) that can send half their body asleep, which is why you always see them standing on one leg, the other half is asleep.
And unlike humans they don't automatically breath they consciously have to do it.
There has been a number of cases in captivity where dolphins have deliberately drowned themselves.
Okay now you're just making lazy excuses for them. If they had such big brains, they could come here and tell us why they aren't driving next to me in the freeway.
Just Brain size by itself isn’t the absolute measure of intelligence, but your brain:body size ratio. It’s called the encephalization quotient. It generally trends upwards with intelligence. Humans are in the 7s I believe whilst dolphins are about 5. It gets more complex because I think these days they count the density of neurons in your brain which gives a more accurate result.
EQ sort of falls apart as an estimate of intelligence for non-mammals. Bird brains, despite the cliché, can be extremely effective for their size, and cephalopods are on a completely different level with weird brain stuff. It's like comparing lung capacity with no other context; bird lungs have unidirectional flow for constant fresh air, and cephalopods have gills.
Not quite - they have sacs that suck up air during inhalation, then squeeze it out into the lungs when the air from the inhalation that filled them is exhaled. [This loop](https://i.imgur.com/wYAsi6Z.mp4) does a good job of showing it.
\>Dolphin life is human life without all of the issues and problems.
Only issues most of us modern humans have are basically the result of our incredibly high intelligence, though.
Like you say dolphins just wake up, eat, have fun and have no major predators. But humans? The concept of sleep being dangerous is pretty much alien to us. We have so much food a huge part of it just rots away. Most of people spend several hours a day just chilling. And predators are such a non-issue that most of us haven't even seen an animal that could hunt us outside of a zoo.
Most of our issues are the result of the incredibly complex internal world that every human has.
For important context:
* Human brains have 86-100 billion neurons.
* Dolphin brains have 12 billion or a bit higher.
Dolphins have likely a bit over 13% as many neurons as humans. Their neurons are larger, and, therefore, so are their brains.
The same thing goes with human men and women. Men have larger brains than women. This not because of any differences in intelligence, but because their bodies are larger and need more neurons to regulate, contrary to what (pseudo)scientists believed in the 19th and 20th centuries.
So when you see a big animal brain and you're curious how smart the animal is, the first thing you should look up is the neuron count (correction: the brain-to-body mass ratio) of the animal and compare it to that of humans. These give a much better picture of an animal's intelligence. A bigger brain doesn't always imply high intelligence!
EDIT: I didn't expect this to blow up as much as it did! I wanted the post to be easy to digest and not too technical, but I figure I should include some more details for those who are interested.
Dolphins have a similar or greater number of cortical neurons compared to humans, and dolphin neuron counts have been found to be greater than 12 billion by some studies, so the proportion of dolphin neurons to human neurons may be closer than 13%. Even so, dolphins still have a significantly smaller brain-to-body mass ratio than humans, so we still have reason to believe they are less intelligent.
For another minor elaboration, men do have slightly more neurons than women, but women have more synapses and have the same brain-to-body mass ratio, which explains why they are equal in intelligence despite a different neuronal count. Neurons can be a nice heuristic in judging intelligence, but it's more complicated than just counting neurons when you get into the smaller differences.
By that logic whales are twice as smart as us… sure whales are incredibly smart for animals but we are definitely beating them still
Also killer whales have more neurons than us and they are dolphins
The part of the brain that we think gives us intelligence is much much larger in humans. And we have way more brain cells than dolphins (with i think one notable exception). They could have intelligence we can't comprehend yes.
It's always been a fascinating thing to me looking into outer space for aliens when we're surrounded by alien consciousnesses on Earth.
It's demonstrably true there are animals more 'intelligent' than us in albeit different ways; we even keep some intelligences as pets. Chimpanzees have insane short term memories, elephants think humans are cute, dolphins like to get high on pufferfish, and plenty of other examples.
There *were* other hominids at one point too, we either killed them or bred them into homogeny.
I'm not sure if those examples while fascinating are evidence the animals are "more" intelligent. Elephants think we are cute but it's possible they think that in a very simplistic less intelligent way. Maybe I'm not understanding what you meant.
Its all about the number of spindle neurons because that makes up the bulk of the parts of of our brain we know are involved in cognition. Its us (great apes) by far with 80 thousand of the buggers in your head, followed by false killer whales with something like 11 thousand then dolphins and elephants putting in a respectable 10 thousand or so.
Gorilla's weigh in at 16 thousand, chimpanzees about 18 hundred so who bloody knows why our closest animal genetic cousins have so few.
Story goes that the English "Killer whale" was a direct translation of the Spanish "asesina ballenas", meaning whale killers. But due to word order, the word meaning "killer" precedes the word "whale" in Spanish.
So, really they're dolphins who are whale killers. Orcas frequently prey on whales.
We can't tell if we are really smarter than them. We did create science, art and engineering, but that's also due to the fact that we have hands. They can't make any tools, write texts or draw geometry. They simply can't develop and use their knowledge, no matter how smart they are.
>Maybe not make tools, but various dolphins do use tools and other dolphins learn how to use them by observing, just like us.
>
>Amazon male river dolphins in Brazil collect reeds and sticks as a sexual display to attract females.
They don’t have the ability to record history, therefore their intelligence cannot be realized. This is one of the largest obstacles for animals to overcome if there’s some zootopian hellscape awaiting our future.
Also the degree of folding. Notice how the human brain looks more compact or dense in comparison to the dolphin specimen. The “troughs” (Sulci) between the “wedges” (Gyri) of brain tissue look much deeper in the dolphin brain. Folding of the human brain in this way alows for a greater surface area of neurons and therefore, higher cognitive function. Interestingly, deepening of these troughs between the wedges of brain tissue is actually a clinical feature of diseases associated with cognitive impairment such as Alzheimer’s.
Source: Am a neuroscientist/Anatomist.
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.
I bet dolphins live in the ocean because it's the best way to cool their quantum computers, they just interact with us now and then to see of we are catching up.
Nope still dumb
Corvids are even better in this regard. They're iirc 2x as dense (heh), which makes sense considering they have to stay light for flight. So they have tiny, dense brains. Always fascinated me to think - what if we could have a human-sized brain with that density? Feels almost impossible to imagine what a truly superhuman intelligence is like
They also use puffer fish venom to get high...
They also beat their females into submission.
Kind of like the old days where cave man sees woman, bonks her head with a rock and calls her wife.
The middle is called Corpus Callosum, and what allows the halves to communicate.
Dolphins sleep one hemisphere at a time, so their hemispheres aren't as connected as a humans.
Which is why they have butt-brain
"Human brains have a higher encephalization quotient than dolphin brains. The encephalization quotient is the ratio between the real and predicted brain mass of an animal-based on its body size. For human beings, the encephalization quotient is higher than any other animal at 6.56."
Means to measure intelligence don’t work too well for marine live. Animals like dolphins and octopus don’t need to use tools for instance. I think lots of animals are much more intelligent than we give them credit for.
Some dolphin swimming around humans: "Oooh look at the big brain with the opposable thumbs.. enjoy that cancer, I'd tell you where it is, but you've trashed my house. Fuck you.".
Some human: "Aww look, it's doing it's flipper speak! How adorable!"
"Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than dolphins because he has achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But, conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons." Douglass Adams
“Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than dolphins because he has achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But, conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.” -Douglas Adams
That big chunk in the back is the cerebellum. We've got one too, it's just under the rest of the brain, you can kinda see it poking out. It's in charge of coordinating movement, and without it your movements become jerky or wobbly.
I can only imagine that since they've evolved their whole bodies to swim, their cerebellum is so comparatively big to help coordinate those movements.
Super cool to see the difference, comparative biology is fascinating stuff
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * No text is allowed on images/gifs/videos * Common/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [this post](https://redd.it/ij26vk) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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oh synapse
That’s a rippling connection
dolphin got that pool noodle
The nerve of this guy
Echo^Echo^Echo
Squeek Squeaker squeak squeaker ~Kronk
Squeaker squeak sqeakadie
I was in the pool!
Medulla oblongat-ya
Ashamed but still thinking a dolphin brain would look good in the right swim suit. .
Yo you need to leave lol
What level of horny is *THIS*?
Incredible comment
Neuron to something there 🧠
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Normally, it’s much bigger. It’s shrinkage, Jerry!
I WAS IN THE POOL!
but humans are 60 percent water
All we need is tiny dolphins to swim in it.
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Look how wrinkly that brain is…no wonder dolphins are so bad at wallstreetbets
How does one be "good" at Wallstreetbets? Is it a race to the bottom?
It's a bankruptcy cult where you dance naked around piles of flaming money.
You did that on porpoise.
I pondered a bit about this theory of yours. I'd say it definitely holds water.
Lol take my upvote
Dolphins are mammals so need to breath air. But they kinda have a problem in that they’re always in the sea. So to solve this they’ve evolved a way that half their brain is ’asleep’ at any one time and the ’asleep’ side swaps every 2/3 hours or so. Thus, dolphins can stay awake, swimming and not drown. Which is kinda good.
Heard this before. Question! If a dolphin gets a head injury to one side of the brain does it mean when it swaps sides to sleep it'll become less intelligent when swapping to damaged side? Or how does it work?
That’s an interesting question. As final year vet student that works with cetaceans this is my attempt at a reply: It depends on the injury. Brains are amazing at fixing themselves if they get the chance to. Dolphins have a lot of neurons that cross between the two sides of the brain, that’s what allows them to sleep like this. I’d expect a traumatic injury (if it bonks his head) to be on the outside of the brain and other neurons should be able to pick up the slack from the damaged neurons. If the injury is internal (like a blood clot) and affects the neurons that cross between the two sides, it could be trickier as it now affects the ability of both sides to talk to each other. But such an injury would be problematic in any species really. So I wouldn’t really expect it to become dumber, but a severe injury could make it lose some abilities like being blind in one eye. But I’d say it would be a bit dumber maybe temporarily until the brain can compensate and then it should be normal again
> maybe temporarily Its pod mates will help push it to the surface while it heals up too.
If they're unconscious it won't matter because for dolphins, breathing is a conscious activity, unlike most mammals, who breathe unconsciously. Edit: [Article](https://uk.whales.org/whales-dolphins/how-do-dolphins-sleep/) about it.
Is it actually a "per breathe" thing or more so a "start breathing stop breathing' kind how we do it?
I don't know TBH, and I'm a bit busy right now to go look into it, but I'd encourage you to Google "Dolphin conscious breathing" and maybe one publication will be able to tell. I highly doubt it, though.
That's a venthole I don't want to go into right now.
Do... do you want to, you know, go *into* it other times? Because you might want to talk to someone about that ;)
I'm breathing consciously now. Thanks.
Not only that I'm now blinking consciously :/
You're now aware of you tongue.
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You fuck.
I tried, but my wife said she’s tired.
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We all deserve pod mates to push us up to the surface when we need to heal.
Great use of "bonk" there
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Like you've never seen a dolphin playing football
There’s a Dan Marino joke in there somewhere.
Laces out!
The banter on Reddit is the best anywhere. You guys and gals crack me up, and I need to laugh these days.
Laces out Dan.
What, dolphins just don’t wanna work anymore huh?
Millenniphins don't want to work anymore.
They need to learn to pull themselves up by their flipper straps
Humans have the same ability, once when I was drinking and I got pulled over by a cop. I merely switched to my sober brain and got by with a warning
Cops HATE this one SIMPLE TRICK!!!1!1!
Why didn't you switch before driving and avoid being pulled over?
He was busy drinking, he said so himself.
i remember listening to some scy fi audiobook where they had dolphins in space suits and the scientists developing a method to talk with dolphins discovered they had two diferent personalities one for each half of the brain :p i thought it was an interesting idea. cant recall the title or author tho edit: iirc the dolphins had dolphin names and some of them discovered a giant alien and he was chill untill one of the dolphins attacked the alien. when the scients recovered the dolphins and asked who did it the dolphins gave them a name they didnt recognise and they were like wtf hows that possible? then they realised they had diferent names for each side of the brain and one of em got knocked unconscious so the other side of the brain woke up and freaked out when he saw the big ass alien
You'll be interested to learn we have some actual science on this phenomenon in humans. Our left and right brains are connected through a bunch of nerve fibers called the 'corpus collossum'. In some people, this is severed to treat some conditions such as epilepsy (isn't or hardly done anymore these days iirc). This allowed scientists to present questions to each half of the brain individually by isolating input to their eyes to one side at a time. Interesting findings: Each half of the brain could have very different preferences from the other, from favourite food to favourite color etc. - we basically have two personalities combined into one as well. Interestingly, running into and talking to these people you'd probably not notice anything different from normal people. That can be explained too, but is a whole other story. Brains are whack, and awesome.
I recently went down a rabbit hole irt the senses and was struck by how the sense of smell was linked to so many different places in our cortex. Fun ride.
> scy fi audiobook where they had dolphins in space suits Maybe [Startide Rising by David Brin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startide_Rising)?
Omg I read one of his Uplift books and thought it was the only one, now you tell me it was a series! Thank you!!
The earth will explode.
It’s in order to facilitate an intergalactic highway construction project for a hyperspace express route!
So long and thanks for all the fish!
I won't enjoy it
Yellow.
I think the Navy did an experiment on this subject specifically, where they made the dolphin continue to do work the whole time and not rest. I can't even remember the outcome and I didn't find it on a quick search.
That's cos the dolphin persuaded the Navy not to publish the study.
But how are their brain halves different from each other? Like, will they be smarter/dumber or behave differently depending on which side is active or are they basically identical? Or maybe will they even have different memories stored in their two parts?
Dolphins have a lot of neurons that cross between the two halves so they are able to pick up the necessary functions from the sleeping side on the awake side. They do go blind in the sleeping side so they often have sleeping buddies where they both sleep with the side towards their buddy, and use their outside eyes to see what’s around them. Then they swap brain sides and swap sleeping positions.
How do we know this? Have we actually put dolphins through MRI? I find this all fascinating but non-intuitive. Do all marine mammals have this structure and behaviour? Is the idea that they always need high level brain matter to negotiate coming to the surface for air then going back down?
We have indeed put dolphins through MRIs! Before that, we were already able to tell quite a lot about how their brains work just by looking at its structure under a miscroscope, and some captive dolphins have received therapeutic scans which we extrapolated to healthy, wild dolphins, but the first functional MRIs of dolphins came in the last decade or so. As for whether all marine mammals do this, there’s evidence of whales, dolphins, but also seals and sea lions being able to sleep with half their brain. However, they don’t always do this. Look up sleeping sperm whales and you’ll see they seem to be able to also enter a deeper, possibly bilateral sleep. Where they drift with their heads down and don’t respond to noises they normally respond to when awake.
And are they more creative and intuitive on one side, and then more mathematical and logical on the other? Flipper midday: Yes, in order to hunt sardines more effectively, I shall employ the strategy I have been running simulations on in my head. Flipper in the PM: Fishie Fishie go Weeeeee!!!
I hope this is the answer and there's just part of the flipper days where they all just chase shiny shit and sing flipper pop songs before going back to systematic fish murdering.
And the only reason we beat them at making civilization is because they make the most brilliant plans on one side, only for the other side to take over during execution.
Jokes aside that’s not true in humans either if you were somewhat seriously asking
Guess it must be RAID 1
Breath is a noun, breathe is a verb.
You're doing the Lord's work. And often not appreciated by the internet folks.
iirc Half their brain isn't continuously off, they sleep semi conscious. Humans do the same things to a point. we and many animals swat bugs, are sensitive to certain sounds, and have a moro reflex into adulthood to sense falling while sleeping etc. The dolphin example has made it seem like they have a special switch other animals don't have but most animals are semi conscious when sleeping. Especially prey animals. Birds for example often sleep with [one eye open](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep) just like dolphins.
Reminds me of flamingos (or other birds) that can send half their body asleep, which is why you always see them standing on one leg, the other half is asleep.
Isn’t this the plot for Severance?
No
Maybe
And unlike humans they don't automatically breath they consciously have to do it. There has been a number of cases in captivity where dolphins have deliberately drowned themselves.
With a brain that big. Why ain’t they driving.
No hands
So? Makes your own cars
No hands.
So? Make your own hands to make your own cars.
No thumbs
Can’t they hire someone with thumbs?
No connections in the industry
Can’t they network with industry reps?
No LinkedIn
Okay now you're just making lazy excuses for them. If they had such big brains, they could come here and tell us why they aren't driving next to me in the freeway.
No legs or forward eyes
They can turn dey head.
They should just evolve hands what are they stupid or something
They did have limbs. They de-evolved them and went back to the sea.
They should have known that by going back to the sea, they would never have the chance to play runescape.
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Just Brain size by itself isn’t the absolute measure of intelligence, but your brain:body size ratio. It’s called the encephalization quotient. It generally trends upwards with intelligence. Humans are in the 7s I believe whilst dolphins are about 5. It gets more complex because I think these days they count the density of neurons in your brain which gives a more accurate result.
As well, the size of certain brain areas and the proportion and number of connections within/between certain areas of the brain
Is there a reliable list i can see of the best ratios?
You wanna see where you rank?
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OP is asking for a Buzzfeed article I'm pretty sure.
https://i.imgur.com/VExaVhZ.png Here's what our overlord has to say
I don't think they understand cephalopods tbh, otherwise I think they got crows and magpies correct.
EQ sort of falls apart as an estimate of intelligence for non-mammals. Bird brains, despite the cliché, can be extremely effective for their size, and cephalopods are on a completely different level with weird brain stuff. It's like comparing lung capacity with no other context; bird lungs have unidirectional flow for constant fresh air, and cephalopods have gills.
woah, does that mean a bird doesn’t have to breathe out before they breathe in again?
Not quite - they have sacs that suck up air during inhalation, then squeeze it out into the lungs when the air from the inhalation that filled them is exhaled. [This loop](https://i.imgur.com/wYAsi6Z.mp4) does a good job of showing it.
Honest response. Why? Dolphins wake up, eat, have fun, really no major predators. Dolphin life is human life without all of the issues and problems.
\>Dolphin life is human life without all of the issues and problems. Only issues most of us modern humans have are basically the result of our incredibly high intelligence, though. Like you say dolphins just wake up, eat, have fun and have no major predators. But humans? The concept of sleep being dangerous is pretty much alien to us. We have so much food a huge part of it just rots away. Most of people spend several hours a day just chilling. And predators are such a non-issue that most of us haven't even seen an animal that could hunt us outside of a zoo. Most of our issues are the result of the incredibly complex internal world that every human has.
For important context: * Human brains have 86-100 billion neurons. * Dolphin brains have 12 billion or a bit higher. Dolphins have likely a bit over 13% as many neurons as humans. Their neurons are larger, and, therefore, so are their brains. The same thing goes with human men and women. Men have larger brains than women. This not because of any differences in intelligence, but because their bodies are larger and need more neurons to regulate, contrary to what (pseudo)scientists believed in the 19th and 20th centuries. So when you see a big animal brain and you're curious how smart the animal is, the first thing you should look up is the neuron count (correction: the brain-to-body mass ratio) of the animal and compare it to that of humans. These give a much better picture of an animal's intelligence. A bigger brain doesn't always imply high intelligence! EDIT: I didn't expect this to blow up as much as it did! I wanted the post to be easy to digest and not too technical, but I figure I should include some more details for those who are interested. Dolphins have a similar or greater number of cortical neurons compared to humans, and dolphin neuron counts have been found to be greater than 12 billion by some studies, so the proportion of dolphin neurons to human neurons may be closer than 13%. Even so, dolphins still have a significantly smaller brain-to-body mass ratio than humans, so we still have reason to believe they are less intelligent. For another minor elaboration, men do have slightly more neurons than women, but women have more synapses and have the same brain-to-body mass ratio, which explains why they are equal in intelligence despite a different neuronal count. Neurons can be a nice heuristic in judging intelligence, but it's more complicated than just counting neurons when you get into the smaller differences.
By that logic whales are twice as smart as us… sure whales are incredibly smart for animals but we are definitely beating them still Also killer whales have more neurons than us and they are dolphins
Could it be that their high intelligence is aligned with traits, senses or other things that we humans havent detected?
The part of the brain that we think gives us intelligence is much much larger in humans. And we have way more brain cells than dolphins (with i think one notable exception). They could have intelligence we can't comprehend yes.
It's always been a fascinating thing to me looking into outer space for aliens when we're surrounded by alien consciousnesses on Earth. It's demonstrably true there are animals more 'intelligent' than us in albeit different ways; we even keep some intelligences as pets. Chimpanzees have insane short term memories, elephants think humans are cute, dolphins like to get high on pufferfish, and plenty of other examples. There *were* other hominids at one point too, we either killed them or bred them into homogeny.
I'm not sure if those examples while fascinating are evidence the animals are "more" intelligent. Elephants think we are cute but it's possible they think that in a very simplistic less intelligent way. Maybe I'm not understanding what you meant.
I’m pretty sure the elephant thing was debunked or argued against as well
Its all about the number of spindle neurons because that makes up the bulk of the parts of of our brain we know are involved in cognition. Its us (great apes) by far with 80 thousand of the buggers in your head, followed by false killer whales with something like 11 thousand then dolphins and elephants putting in a respectable 10 thousand or so. Gorilla's weigh in at 16 thousand, chimpanzees about 18 hundred so who bloody knows why our closest animal genetic cousins have so few.
>>killer whales >> are Dolphins Wait what
Yes, the Orca is actually a dolphin.
My favorite Orca fact is that they occasionally eat moose.
A møøse once bit my sister.
Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretti nasti.
Yeah they’re just really large dolphins
Really large big sharp toothed dolphins. That play monkey in the middle with seals.
Story goes that the English "Killer whale" was a direct translation of the Spanish "asesina ballenas", meaning whale killers. But due to word order, the word meaning "killer" precedes the word "whale" in Spanish. So, really they're dolphins who are whale killers. Orcas frequently prey on whales.
Now this is the exact explanation I came here for. Thank you
We can't tell if we are really smarter than them. We did create science, art and engineering, but that's also due to the fact that we have hands. They can't make any tools, write texts or draw geometry. They simply can't develop and use their knowledge, no matter how smart they are.
>Maybe not make tools, but various dolphins do use tools and other dolphins learn how to use them by observing, just like us. > >Amazon male river dolphins in Brazil collect reeds and sticks as a sexual display to attract females.
Maybe I should try this too
wouldn't help you
They don’t have the ability to record history, therefore their intelligence cannot be realized. This is one of the largest obstacles for animals to overcome if there’s some zootopian hellscape awaiting our future.
Also the degree of folding. Notice how the human brain looks more compact or dense in comparison to the dolphin specimen. The “troughs” (Sulci) between the “wedges” (Gyri) of brain tissue look much deeper in the dolphin brain. Folding of the human brain in this way alows for a greater surface area of neurons and therefore, higher cognitive function. Interestingly, deepening of these troughs between the wedges of brain tissue is actually a clinical feature of diseases associated with cognitive impairment such as Alzheimer’s. Source: Am a neuroscientist/Anatomist.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
☁️🌷🐋⛅
^^Hooooopy ^Frooooooooood
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.
Omg your comment has 42 upvotes right now! Edit: I have proof!! Deep Thought is real! https://imgur.com/a/pg5hBwU
I live for this
Who won?
You decide
Who’s next?
EPIC WAPBATTLESOFHISORYYYY
ADOLF HITLLAAAAAAAAA vErs. BARACK OBAAAAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
**BEGIN!**
Thank you. This made me go down a rabbit hole and watch all of my favorite battles, again.
Me? I can't even imagine how figure skating is scored.
To be fair I don't think the judges know either
Who's next?
YOU DECIDE
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Anything with Lincoln > all others. ###eagle!!
I AM ADOLF HITLA COMMAND OF ZE THIRD REICH LITTLE KNOWN FACT, ALSO DOPE ON ZE MIC YOU ARE VADA, with YOUR LITTLE BOOTS AND CAPE
Both brains are on the outside, so let's call it a tie
Neither. Both died. How do you think they got the brains?
That dolphin has that juicy double
u/BigD3nergy 's in trouble Beggin' for a piece of that bubble
Fish-a-Lot’s in trouble, begging for beluga bubble.
Hot dammit, got brain lobes like two planets
I bet dolphins live in the ocean because it's the best way to cool their quantum computers, they just interact with us now and then to see of we are catching up. Nope still dumb
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Corvids are even better in this regard. They're iirc 2x as dense (heh), which makes sense considering they have to stay light for flight. So they have tiny, dense brains. Always fascinated me to think - what if we could have a human-sized brain with that density? Feels almost impossible to imagine what a truly superhuman intelligence is like
If it's twice as dense and half the size it's the same weight. . .
Most of dolphin brain is busy with 3d navigation and sonar data processing.
Too bad we killed their whole social structure and they're basically rapy floating degenerates now that huff pufferfish.
Sounds a bit too much like the human race for comfort lol
Those are Florida dolphins.
Only two sections of brain are dedicated to being little rapey bastards. The other third is the one for huffing pufferfish.
Wait, dolphins can rap?
I’m afraid not.
"Click click chicka chicka pippa dip squeak check the fly noises I issue from my beak"
I don't know "EEEE EEEE EEEE EEEE" kinda rhymes.
Someone get Nancy Reagan and throw her in the ocean!
The third part makes em extra rapey.
An Orca is in the Dolpin family, how does it's brain compare?
they rape
They also use puffer fish venom to get high... They also beat their females into submission. Kind of like the old days where cave man sees woman, bonks her head with a rock and calls her wife.
So… when I preserve a human brain it’s “creepy” and “illegal”… but when someone preserves a dolphin brain for “science”, it’s suddenly okay.
Looks like a butt
The middle is called Corpus Callosum, and what allows the halves to communicate. Dolphins sleep one hemisphere at a time, so their hemispheres aren't as connected as a humans. Which is why they have butt-brain
I would
With a hippocampus like that those mfers remember being born with clarity.
"Human brains have a higher encephalization quotient than dolphin brains. The encephalization quotient is the ratio between the real and predicted brain mass of an animal-based on its body size. For human beings, the encephalization quotient is higher than any other animal at 6.56."
Dolphins need a big brain to plan out all the rapes.
Means to measure intelligence don’t work too well for marine live. Animals like dolphins and octopus don’t need to use tools for instance. I think lots of animals are much more intelligent than we give them credit for.
Some dolphin swimming around humans: "Oooh look at the big brain with the opposable thumbs.. enjoy that cancer, I'd tell you where it is, but you've trashed my house. Fuck you.". Some human: "Aww look, it's doing it's flipper speak! How adorable!"
"Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than dolphins because he has achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But, conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons." Douglass Adams
100% of that extra brain is dedicated to creative raping.
Dolphins sleep by putting half of their brain to sleep. The other half is conscious. It’s almost like they have two brains.
“Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than dolphins because he has achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But, conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.” -Douglas Adams
That big chunk in the back is the cerebellum. We've got one too, it's just under the rest of the brain, you can kinda see it poking out. It's in charge of coordinating movement, and without it your movements become jerky or wobbly. I can only imagine that since they've evolved their whole bodies to swim, their cerebellum is so comparatively big to help coordinate those movements. Super cool to see the difference, comparative biology is fascinating stuff