May 26, 2011 • 33 mins
Day of the Dolphin: In 1973, moviegoers watched dolphins carry out assassination plots in "The Day of the Dolphin," part of the dolphin fever stirred up by John C. Lilly. But just how smart are these mammals? Join Robert and Julie as they enter the world of the Dolphin.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
what's your opinion on dolphins? Let's just get get it out.
What is your straightforward view on dolphins as a human female,
(00:26):
As a human female, it makes total sense. Why, um,
there are vans that have the depiction of dolphins on
the sides of them. Now, when you put it like that,
dolphin vans, dolphins, right, T shirts, it all makes sense.
The tattoos the symbol of love and unity. Yeah, this
(00:47):
kind of like if you see them depicted in art
and tattoos and van murals, um and uh and gatty
t shirts, like they're this supernatural sea being that rises
up from the water to the stove, gifts on on
on on fishermen that happened to catch them in their
(01:07):
nets or something. It's yeah, it's really kind of strange.
I think it's clear to say that we have an
obsession with them as humans or you know, as of
late yeah, right, And and this could be because of Flipper,
which is what like nineteen sixties subtly that that show,
which sort of introduced everybody to this incredible creature. And
I think most people before that thought, oh, dolphins just
(01:28):
one of those you know, fish swimming around. It's not
that exciting, some sort of freaky sea mammal, you know. Yeah,
did not a lot of thought put into it. And
of course, part of part of this has to do
with the whole flipper craze also has its roots with
John C. Lily, the out there um fringy. Well, at
his best, he was kind of a fringe scientist and
(01:49):
then he just completely jumped over the fringe and took
off willy nilly into the into the bushes of of
non science. Yeah. And for a while though he was
pretty well funded um and was doing some very freaky experiments,
including flooding a house for two weeks and uh having
one of his research assistance female hole up with a dolphin.
(02:11):
And we we we've talked about it before. It's in fact,
we talked about it in the weirdo rock Star Lives
of Scientists, So there's much more of that there. But
but it was a period where suddenly, you know, for
all his faults, he was like, hey, dolphins are pretty
incredible creatures. And they have some really incredible characteristics and
mental Uh, they have an amazing mental capacity. Yeah, and
(02:32):
their mammals like us, which not you know, it's probably
not apparent to everybody at first, but um, they presided
me they're young for the first eight months of life.
Um and and I think that we can't help but
find similarities between ourselves and dolphins, particularly when we think
about their language capabilities. And again this is sort of
the whole like Flipper thing John C. Lily thing. These
(02:54):
are the people or the ways that showed us that
that dolphins can really talk to us in a certain way.
And you think about it this way, this is pretty amazing.
This is pointed out in the movie The Cove. Dolphins
can understand sign language, which okay, yeah, great, so can chimpanzees.
But think about this. Dolphins do not have hands fingers.
(03:15):
It's true, they don't. They don't even have the reference material,
which is so interesting to think that they would be
able to take all this sign language. Um and again,
which we already know we created based on our finger system, right,
and we've got the number system based on our finger system.
A lot of language is based on our number system.
But these guys know. Wow, so they can't type either.
(03:37):
Like if I were to call them out on the
blogs and like talk a lot of snack dolphins are
gonna type, what are they gonna do? They're just gonna go.
They've got that brain computer interface though, so they should
be blogging soon. Oh, the the brain computer interface. Yeah,
we'll get to um. Yeah they are, they are. Well.
We should also mention the whole cute factor really quick,
(03:59):
because even though I'm not convinced that they are cute
per se, they do have that sort of freaky smile. Look,
they kind of look like they're smiling. They have a
permo smile. Yeah, And I tried to get to the
bottom of business here with you about this, Like what
it was that freaked you out about? It was the
Uncanny Valley effect. Maybe just because it's a Permo smile.
I mean, it's cute. How can you not know it's
(04:19):
But it's like it is kind of a permo smile.
It's kind of like the joker or something. Or it's
also it's like I've had this conversation with my wife
before about our cat where I would be like, what
would it be like if the cat could smile? Or laugh,
and we both agree that would be really creepy. So
the idea of an animal smiling or even appearing like
we kind of flow with it. With dogs, I guess,
not that dogs actually smile, but they kind of have,
(04:42):
you know, when they're panting, they open their mouth and
we're like, oh, he looks happy. They got the ears
that yet it works more with them, But but with
the dolphin, I'm just kind of like, what's they smiling about?
What's it's? You know, what is this idea of fun
or humor? It probably doesn't line up with my idea
of fun or humor. Well, regardless of still on the
pantheon of cuteness next to unicorns, kittens, and horses. Yes,
(05:06):
so it's uh, if we turn back the clock on
the dolphin, if we start looking at where they came from,
they of course did not come from another planet. Uh.
There there, let's go ahead and dismiss that right out.
They are not um, you know, here to study us
um and report back to the mothership. But they did
evolve from um other forms of life, as everything else has.
(05:31):
And if you do you turn back the clock current,
according to current studies, you end up with a very
strange looking creature that I will I'll either put a
picture of this on the accompanying blog post for this
podcast or for this episode, or I will um, I'll
embed it or something just so you can see it.
Because the the earlier form of life that modern dolphins
(05:52):
evolved from looks kind of like a uh, how do
it describe the Yes, the opposite A cute kind of
like a hyena hippo, Like a hyena hip and a
hippo had a baby, and that baby like had some
plastic surgery done when it grew up. It's a look
more like an alligator. Yeah, I can I see that.
(06:12):
There's like the head has the features of the hippo
sort of around the eyes and in the cheekbones if
you could say that they don't know that they have
cheek bones. Um, but yeah, the rest of the body
sort of looks like an alligator. Yeah. If they had
had like chicken coops forty eight million years ago, this
thing looks like it would just eat chickens NonStop. Like
there's something kind of fox like about it. Yeah, And
it's surprising when you think about the dolphin today, which
is sleek and I won't say cuddly, because they're not cuddly,
(06:35):
but they're playful. And again they've got the permo smile.
This is the opposite of that. Yeah, this is kind
of have the more of a sort of a perma
snarl going on. And uh so this creature again forty
eight million years ago, it would have been a semi
aquatic herbivore um with the name the end or something
(06:55):
like that. Yeah, endoyas let's call it called that. And
it was actually a related to the hippo. I mean,
the hippo is a is a fairly close evolutionary relative
to all cessations. Yeah, and uh, I mean this is
this is the group of of the hoof first, I
guess you could say, right, the hoof ones and um.
(07:18):
As a result of this information, um, and this is
the best gas right too. We don't have Yeah, we
all just based on theory. Yeah, but some people have said, oh,
they've evolved from dogs. This is not true. You'll see
that sometimes, um, you know obviously on the internet out there.
But because you know of their connection with rhinos um
and and you know obviously like an alligators as well,
(07:39):
this you know, you see some similarities in terms of
starting out as being a shallow waters forager. This is
this is what the dolphin was doing, hanging out, you know,
beach cheer in the water. And then you know, throughout
the years became a bit of a more sleeker version
of this self, right as as natural selection kicked then
(08:00):
and uh what in the the more aquatic variations were
the ones that survived. Yeah, but we should probably talk
a little bit more too about the features of dolphins.
They bill anticetations right along with porpoises and whales, and um,
these guys can measure as long as thirteen feet in
weigh one thousand pounds, so they can get up there. Um,
(08:21):
they come superficially resemble fishes we've talked about. They are
mammals um, and they travel and pods of up to
a dozen dolphins, which is interesting because this is the
sort of community that they're in. It's not just that
they're hanging out that this is usually their families that
they're traveling along with. And we'll talk a little bit
more about that later and how it's sort of um
(08:42):
makes us better understand them as being social creatures like us.
And uh, they have pretty big brains too. Yeah, based
on m R. I scans, we can you know, we've
really been able to get in there and go elbow
deep into these fantastic delphin dolphin brains and uh, they're
they're big relative to their body size, and they have
(09:03):
a highly convoluted neo cortex, which is a structure that
also allows for self awareness, processing of complex emotions, and
they we we tend to see their U. The evolution
of the dolphin brain um as its occurring in various
growth spurts throughout history, Like the first big jump would
(09:26):
have happened about thirty nine million years ago, and this
is when you had primitive dolphins that have you know,
they've they've they've diverged, they've shot off, they're they're living
it up in the water. And uh, this is around
the time that echolocation became really big. And yeah, I
think of bats, except it's you know, it's a it's
a little more complex than that. But they're using sound
(09:46):
to see things, using sound to hunt. And we've observed
some remarkable um examples of this, of of them using
it to to track prey and actually sort of heard
them in UM. It's U really incredible. It's very sophisticated.
So now or basically Yeah, there's actually one study that
they had a couple of dolphins and um, it was
(10:09):
predicated basically on them being able to get some fish.
So each of them had to hit a letter on
the right or left and they had to mimic each
other and then they'd get the fish. They'd be rewarded
with that. Well, they did that over and over again,
and then they did it in different rooms where they
couldn't see each other, and finally they did it to
the point where they could only hear each other. And again,
if the other dolphin does not hit the correct button,
(10:32):
then they're not going to get the fish. And so
what they observed is that even in another room that
they would hear the dolphins say something to the other dolphin,
which then was construted as hey hit the left lever, buddy,
or something along this line, so we can get this fish.
And in fact, they would do this over and over again.
And it just shows you that the power of echo
(10:54):
location is for them, um, so incredible and used in
ways that you know, they could particularly just be sort
of blind and be able to see using this sonar
and um, you also draw dragged in the social uh
connotation there because that was another evolutionary spurt in brain
(11:16):
size that occurred they think about fifteen million years ago
as they developed a more social lifestyle and uh and
social interactions that takes a fair amount of brain power.
So the brain again began to grow inside become became
more complex as they had to us as the dolphins
that were better capable of navigating uh, their social structure
(11:39):
were the ones to survive and become the species. Yeah,
we know in humans too that we develop our neo
cortex in part as a way to to deal with
our social situations, including parenting. And again there's another parallel
because you do see dolphins staying with your young for
two three years raising them, and again there's a whole
feeding thing for eight months at the very big and
(12:00):
then traveling as a family. Yeah, you'll typically see the
vacation spots. Um. They're always kind of loud though, because
they're they're taking photos and yeah, yeah, I know, the
loud shirts. What are you gonna do? Um? But you know,
so that's that's a I think, just a little glimpse
of their intelligence. Um. And again there their brain size
(12:22):
that second only to humans, so they trump everybody else
in terms of brain size umnix for us. Yeah, but
we don't use the echolocation to find things. So true true,
and we should say to that a lot of their
brain is uh, that brain space is committed for echolocation, right,
that's why one of the reasons why it's so large. Yeah,
(12:44):
it's one of these intruations we get into and looking
at any species though where in analyzing an animals intelligence,
you all, we always inevitably fall back on the human model.
So just because because one animal, the human is capable
of reading Moby dick and uh and the doll and isn't,
doesn't mean that the dolphin is stupid. It's just a
different type of intelligence, right, I mean and and and
(13:05):
actually Mobi dick, right, I mean one could be reading it,
the other could be just you know, terrorizing ships, right.
And I mean that's interesting that you bring up what
is intelligence because we've talked about it before. We've talked
about it is pattern recognition and the ability to try
to predict the future and pre plan And you see
this in dolphins again and again. We've talked about this
before about dolphins using sponges on the tips of their
(13:27):
noses to forage on the ocean floor. And the reason
they do that is so that in case there's some
sort of creature there, it doesn't like snap out at
them and uh you know, scar them or take a
chunk of skin off, and it allows them to kind
of see where the creatures are without getting hurt. And
obviously this takes pre planning. Yeah, I mean, it's too
of you. So it's a it's a fairly advanced technique. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
(13:51):
And there's another and good example I really like this
is from dolphin researcher Peter Rand Folkins. Uh. He tells
the story of out how Marine World Africa, USA. They
had trained the dolphins to retrieve trash and bring it
to the trainer and then they get a reward fish
of course. And um, what they saw is that the
(14:13):
dolphins would clean up the area spick and span, and
yet pieces of trash they would still find and bring
up to the trainer and get their fish. And so
they were saying, I have this as possible. This area
is completely clean. And what they had found is that
one dolphin had begun to put a stash of um
trash into this little trash bag that was on the
(14:35):
side that and how incredible was that that the dolphin
actually planned for that saw the trash bag and was like, Um,
that's gonna be my storehouse. That's going to make sure
that I am always knee deep in fish. Well, you know,
this gets us into the area of more into the
area of what can we have make dolphins do, which
after this brief break, we're going to discuss in detail.
(15:01):
This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow.
All right, so we're back and let's talk about what
dolphins can do for us because as humans, you know,
recognizing an animal and animals intelligence is great, but can
we use it to fight wars or to do work
(15:23):
that we don't want to do? I mean, sadly, a
lot of it comes down to that, or or even
what can it do to entertain me? Yeah? I know,
I'm I'm just thinking that one respect. They're really lucky
that they are no longer really dwelling animals and they're
in the water, because we probably would have them on
trash detail a lot of the highways. I can picture
them in their little orange jumpsuits. Um well, one of
(15:47):
the the the first efforts to make or well convinced
I don't know. It depends how you look at it.
Dolphins to do thanks for us UM back in Sea
Lab two, which we discussed in our Life Aquatic podcast.
This was UM at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco,
and this was an underwater laboratory environment. Uh, most of
(16:11):
the tests they were doing that we're just figuring out, Hey,
can people work, um, say, at a depth of two
feet for thirty straight days? Can they you know, can
they can they carry out experiments? Are they gonna go
crazy or become sick? Yeah? It was human centric, Yeah,
very very human centric. They also experiment with the trained
por porpoise named Toufee to do courier work between the
(16:31):
habitat um on the ocean floor and the surface, and
instead of using a hose to provide the humans with
the all the supplies from the surface, the Navy sometimes
used toughie to bring things down, things like male tools
and even bottles of soda. So I'm not saying it
wasn't kind of demeaning to the dolphin, but um, but
(16:52):
it was based in pure research saying it was sort
of beyond what they should have been doing, or well,
I mean they should have been doing like watercolors. Well,
well it gets weirder when you when you start looking
at with the the name because in you know, the U. S.
Navy was more into like, all right, well they can
fetch a soda, but can they do things we actually
need them to do. Because we can get soda, we
(17:13):
can we can provide soda for our submarine. Right, we
can do that. But they do give them to find
explosive minds, right, yeah, so that was a big deal
in the sixties. Um mind sweeping. Yeah. They weren't disarming mines.
They weren't going down like you know, bread busting it
open and finding blue wires and red wires or anything
like that because again no hands. But they did teach
(17:34):
them how to how to find the mines and then
they would reward them with with a you know, a
nice fish treat. Have you ever seen a clue here?
Fish really big In the dolphin world, Yeah, yeah. Another example,
and this is again the US Navy is uh and
this is from Slate dot Com and The Tail and
the Dolphin by Daniel Anger. Um it is quote. Dolphins
and sea lions are also trained to use bite plate
(17:56):
systems to mark or capture water borne intruders. When they
spot an enemy diver underwater, they can poke them with
a bite plate to release a strobe light beacon, presumably
so someone can find that person. And they might also
carry c shaped clamps that snaps shut on a diver's leg.
Once a dolphin cuffs the diver, it turns back to
(18:16):
its hamler with a tether line. Oh my goodness, can
you imagine getting cuffed by a dolphin? Yeah, it's like
Miami Vice there. I mean, it's uh, it's amazing, it is.
I mean about the only thing more amazing is if
the tether were actually attached to the dolphin, right, Yeah, yeah,
that's true, and they could just bring them in and
they had a little dolphin car and yeah, but I
like the idea that because you don't want the dolphin
(18:37):
then to go rogue and like just drag the person
out to see you want him to hand him over
to the authorities. Now, but human authority. It's true, Yeah,
it's true. You know who knows what they're capable? Evenue.
It makes me think of The Onion, which has a
couple of very funny dolphin headlines, but one of them
is dolphins develop opposable thumbs and the whole article, which
is kind of funny, but actually the article is hilarious.
(19:00):
It talks about how now that they have a postable thombs,
humans are toast. Yeah, they're gonna take us over. They're
like I said, if they were to have hands, it's
like who knows exactly what they want? Um, because we
can't talk to them and talk to him. Yes, this
is this is really interesting. Um. So if you go
back to the nineties, you had this guy named Lewis
(19:21):
Herman and he worked at the uh Kualo Basin Marine
Mammal Laboratory in Honolulu, and uh he discovered the bottom
of those dolphins can keep track of over a hundred
different words, and they can. They can they can roll
with different commands that use these words in different forms
like the The example that I ran across was like fristance.
(19:42):
You should be able to say, hey, can you bring
that surfboard to me? And they would understand that, and
then they would equally understand hey can you bring me
to that surfboard? Which the difference is obvious to us,
but we're talking about I mean, the English isn't a
second language, like language is the second language for the dolphin.
You know, I think if you're trying to learn German
and how difficult that is because the placement affords and
(20:04):
I'm doing it as an as a dolphin, right yea,
with several languages, because your trainer could be German, right yeah,
and really fascinating. Um is this more recent approach and
one of one of them. This is mainly a dolphin
researcher by the name of Denise Herzing, and she's collaborating
with Thad Starner, who's an artificial intelligence researcher at the
(20:26):
Atlanta Zone, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the projects called
Cessation Hearing and Telemetry or CHAT. I think maybe they
can chat first. I don't know, I'm just stand but basically,
the the the ideas really neat here. It's all right,
so dolphins kind of had they have their own language.
And I'm doing quote marks with my fingers because it's
(20:50):
this is a whole different discussion about what constitutes a
language and all. But they have they can clearly um
communicate via sound. They use sound in very clever ways
and often in way that we can't even fully understands,
Like they they can produce sounds that frequencies up to
two kiloherts, around ten times as high as the highest
pitch that a human can hear, and in so many
(21:11):
different directions to you, right, which makes it again hard
to sort of tag what that vocalization might mean because
you don't really know as humans, we don't really know
what it's being directed to. Yeah, they occupy just a
different sonic landscape than we do as a species. So
while the past effort was let's teach them some human language,
you know, and then that met met with very limited success,
(21:33):
and we haven't made a lot of strides towards understanding
their language because again, a lot of us out of
our hearing. So this effort is is kind of about
developing a new language. Like meeting them halfway, right, it's fascinating.
I don't know. Um, they're they're recording interpreting in the
responding to the dolphin sounds. This is um. This is
from an article and new scientists talk with the dolphin
(21:55):
via underwater translation machine. UM and starting his students are
built a prototype device featuring a smartphone sized computer and
to hydrophone capable of detecting the full range of dolphins sounds. Yeah,
and then also you know, it's about detecting the patterns
within their sound cataloging detecting um IT says a diver
will carry the computer in a waterproofed case worn across
(22:18):
the chest, and LEDs embedded around the diver's mask will
light up to show where a sound picked up by
the hydrophones originated from. The diver will also have a
handheld device, the x as a combination of mouse and
keyboard for selecting what kind of sound to make in response.
So these are sort of the first steps in trying
to uh they're calling it co create the language, which
(22:39):
I think is funny because it'llaboration right because they've had
a lot of meetings with the dolphins and and they're
into it. Um So, Herzing and Starner will actually start
testing this system on wild Atlantic spotted dolphins in the
middle of this year, and at first, divers will play
back one of the eight words coined by the team
to mean like seaweed or bow wave ride for example.
(23:01):
Um in the software will then listen to see if
the dolphins mimic them. I don't know, we'll see I'm
I'm I'm curious, like I instantly am thinking though of
like this outrageous scenario where we make first contact with
the dolphins. Yeah yeah, Like what would like on one hand,
are they're going to say, greetings human, we I am
so glad that you can we can finally communicate as
(23:22):
a as as brothers, and we wish to convey to
you this this message of environmental responsibility. Or would it
be like that's that's my my erudite dolphin voice. Or
would it be like, yo, man, do you want give
me that fish? I'll totally go get your mind if
you give me that fish. Yeah yeah, or like I'll
totally tell you about gray matter, but yeah, I want
um a thousand barrels of fish right now? Uh sorry,
(23:45):
gray matter dark matter matter? Yeah? Either one one mistranslate.
One mistranslation between dolphin and human language. And then they
go out and start harvesting brains. That's the problem with
their newly sprung up as. They're like, they want us
to get gray matter. Do you mean in the dark matter,
all that dark matter we store at bottom of the ocean,
(24:05):
And they're like, no, they's a great matter. Like all right,
fish the fish, let's start harvesting brains. Let's do it. Yeah, yeah,
next thing you Knew documentary. Um, okay, so they are
very much like us, right, we've sort of discussed why
big brains mammals. They like hanging out with your young
traveling in pods, and they're altruistic, yes, which makes sense
(24:27):
for us um in evolutionary sense, right, because if we
do something nice for each other, then we kind of
help stabilize the species and we promote success as a whole.
But why in the world would they help humans? I
want to know why would they help That's the thing,
because you can understand them, like, you know, looking after
other dolphins in the pod because the pod needs to survive.
But you know, why are they helping out, say human
(24:49):
fishermen um in in South America? Where the where the
dolphins actually heard the fish in towards the nets? Or
why are they cool with you know, fetching mine ens
or or slapping handcuffs on strange divers. I mean, is
it really that that little fish treat is that important
to them? I don't know. I mean you have heard
(25:09):
before of people being rescued by dolphins, right, yeah, or
of surfers going you know, being about to be attacked
by a shark, and then you know sort of t
boned to the side by a dolphin, you know, a
thwarting the attack. So I don't know. I think I
think that's probably one of the reasons why they're such
an enigma to us, because again there's this connection seems
to happen um with us. But also like the video
(25:32):
you sent me, which was like, oh, yeah, shootest thing
I've ever seen of dolphin nuzzling with a kitten on
a boat. Yes, and I will definitely embed this on
the accompanying blog post for this for this article. But yeah,
you see like a cat walking over to the edge
of the swimming pool, or it's not swimming pool, it's
a dolphin tank, but walking to the edge of the tank,
and the dolphin comes up and they're like, like the
(25:53):
dolphins nuzzling the top of the cat's head the same
way that you know you need cat owners out there
likely to do to their own pet cat. It's straight
and yeah, it's it's very weird the way that the
dolphin does it because it's it's the cat obviously is
into it, and it's right on that part of the
head that the cat loves. Um. So there's that, and
then um there the other saying, you know, and just
(26:14):
I feel like we've already sort of be smirched dinosaurs
and talking about their sex lives, so we might as
well talk about dolphins. Turns out that these are randy folks. Yeah. Well,
it's not like they're trying to keep it private or anything.
They don't care. They're out there doing it. They have
sex stuff sex, not necessarily to procreate. And this is
so weird too. They actually can develop HPV, which is
(26:37):
human people of a virus. Uh. There was an interview
with um R Flo from Science Friday, and he was
talking to a couple of folks about this. Um. It
was an interview with Dr Hendrik Nolan's the University of Florida.
And let me just read it real quick. This is
a transcript of this. Uh, there was, It says from Plateau.
(26:57):
Another question you were intriguing me a boy talking about
the sea of viruses that are swimming in the ocean.
And one of those I was thinking about and I've
heard about, is this genital papuoma virus. UM. I know
there's a human papulovirus that might lead to cancer. Is
there something similar in that sea of viruses that might
be affecting the dolphins, and doctor Nolan says there is,
and it probably doesn't come from the c order. It
(27:17):
may be related to their sexual behavior maybe, which is
purely hypothesis. But no, dolphins do get genital papul imma
virus infections, and what is actually unique about them is
that they're the only other species other than humans that
we see multiple type of infections at the same time.
Um so, But the weird thing about is that that
(27:37):
doesn't actually develop into cervical cancer for dolphins. And that's
a big question from why that might happen in a
human and not in dolphins. In yeah, so, I mean
STD awareness campaigns, I think for dolphins. And well, one thing,
I've brought this up before and I will probably bring
it up in every discussion about dolphins for the rest
(27:58):
of my life. But um I the reports of Okay,
only a few people on this Earth can afford a
private submarine that allows him to go underwater, Branson, We're
looking at you and have and and the engage in
human sex in front of a an underwater plan again,
Richard Branson. So these people have reported dolphins coming and
(28:20):
watching this activity through the glass, which again that that's
just why is this happening? Why, what does the dolphin care?
What does the dolphin possibly get out of? Is it
just because there's motion and they're just curious? I mean,
I guess I would tend to decide with that versus
any kind of perversion on the dolphins. Well, I mean,
I think about John C. Lily's experiment too with his
(28:40):
female research assistant who lived in the flooded half for
two weeks with the dolphin. It began to expose his
genitals to her and began to rub up against her.
And I won't go into all the other things that did,
but uh, clearly like there's there's an interest in interspecies,
uh you know, going songs. Well, again, they're just rant
(29:02):
any importness in a storm, right, So I guess that's
I mean, I guess that's their attitude. Yeah, they have
a T shirt that says that, Yeah, well there you go.
We we managed to end that on again dolphins, sex
and STDs. And they still have a cheap smile though,
Yeah they do. And uh, of course we have a
lot of information on dolphins on the house stuff works
(29:23):
dot com website. If you just go to the home page.
There you'll find that the gold, big old search bar.
Just drop dolphins in there and just back in the
results that you will receive Heaven. Yeah, so they're more
information awaits you there. But hey, what awaits me now
is some listener mail. See what we have here? Ah,
(29:43):
here's one from Chris. Chris writes in and says, uh,
and he's responding to our episode about the five finger
evolutionary discount, about the the five fingers that we have
and that we share with just about every other animal
on the planet. And he says, today I was cutting
wood and I accidentally cut my pinky. When I went inside,
(30:06):
I put a band aid on it to keep it safe,
and I proceeded with my day. Before bed, I faithfully
brush my teeth, and an attempt to keep my band
aid intact, I tried not to use my pinkie, so
I stuck it out. Have you ever tried to brush
your teeth without your pinky? Let me tell you it
is really hard. When it comes to the turning to
get every single spot of tooth nice and clean, it
(30:27):
tends to be difficult. Indeed, we do need five fingers.
Um Chris from Manitoba. And then Chris adds ps. If
we didn't have pinkies, then when we drank tea, we
wouldn't be able to do the whole pinkies up routine.
See uh see they do come they do come in
very handy so here here. So that's some some excellent
research there from Chris uh And indeed you find this too.
(30:49):
I've found this to be the case. You know, you
you tend to discount some of your fingers. You're like pinkies.
I don't know what there for. You know, they're just
hanging out there on the end. But you you nick
your finger, you end up having to throw a band
aid over it, and and it's like totally inconveniences everything
you're doing throughout the day. Well, you become aware of
it all the time when you go to open a
door knob or heats, you know, brushing his teeth and yeah,
all of a sudden, you're like, I am more aware
(31:11):
of my fingers than I've ever been in my entire life,
and the fact that one of them is throbbing in
pain right now. And here's another bit of listener mail
from our listener Tom. And Tom writes in and says, uh, hey,
stuff to blow your Mind podcast. I can't say enough
how much you to enjoy your podcast along with the
Tech Stuff podcast. Indeed another fine listening choice. And uh,
actually it actually educates me as I drive among corn
(31:33):
fields on the way to work. Um, I tend to
listen to the episodes in Big Old Bunches. So I
am writing after listening to the podcast on music changing
our minds and changing our minds the hard way, So
that yeah, these were the one dealing with what happens
in our brain when we listen to music, and the
other what happens to our mind or the expression of
ourself when you say, gets struck by lightning or have
(31:54):
an iron rod fire up through your prefrontal cortex. Right,
how does that change the sense of yourself? Right? So
he says, when hearing that the music can actually alter
our moves and behavior and and possibly for the positive
and not the kiss army way my mom warned me
about my mind, immediately jumped to Bill and Ted's excellent Adventure,
another fine work. Yes, Uh, the scientific evidence actually makes
(32:16):
it seem movie plausible that the quote unquote perfect band
like Wild Stallions could actually bring about world peace. Awesome,
So that I that's that's interesting. I hadn't really made
the connection there between Bill and Ted and uh and
those topics. That's right. And then all everybody's neurons just
firing at the same time to the wild styling and
(32:37):
you know, feeling this unity and when this saving the
wall there you go. Well, hey, if you have any
strange movie connections to make, you know, I'm always game
for those, and you can share them with us at
at our Facebook account or our Twitter. We are Blow
the Mind on both of those and we try and
update those with all sorts of cool links and whatnot,
and you can always drop us a line at Blow
(32:59):
the Mind. That has to fork dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. VI is it
how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
of our homepage. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has
a ride. Download it today on iTunes
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
what's your opinion on dolphins? Let's just get get it out.
What is your straightforward view on dolphins as a human female,
(00:26):
As a human female, it makes total sense. Why, um,
there are vans that have the depiction of dolphins on
the sides of them. Now, when you put it like that,
dolphin vans, dolphins, right, T shirts, it all makes sense.
The tattoos the symbol of love and unity. Yeah, this
(00:47):
kind of like if you see them depicted in art
and tattoos and van murals, um and uh and gatty
t shirts, like they're this supernatural sea being that rises
up from the water to the stove, gifts on on
on on fishermen that happened to catch them in their
(01:07):
nets or something. It's yeah, it's really kind of strange.
I think it's clear to say that we have an
obsession with them as humans or you know, as of
late yeah, right, And and this could be because of Flipper,
which is what like nineteen sixties subtly that that show,
which sort of introduced everybody to this incredible creature. And
I think most people before that thought, oh, dolphins just
(01:28):
one of those you know, fish swimming around. It's not
that exciting, some sort of freaky sea mammal, you know. Yeah,
did not a lot of thought put into it. And
of course, part of part of this has to do
with the whole flipper craze also has its roots with
John C. Lily, the out there um fringy. Well, at
his best, he was kind of a fringe scientist and
(01:49):
then he just completely jumped over the fringe and took
off willy nilly into the into the bushes of of
non science. Yeah. And for a while though he was
pretty well funded um and was doing some very freaky experiments,
including flooding a house for two weeks and uh having
one of his research assistance female hole up with a dolphin.
(02:11):
And we we we've talked about it before. It's in fact,
we talked about it in the weirdo rock Star Lives
of Scientists, So there's much more of that there. But
but it was a period where suddenly, you know, for
all his faults, he was like, hey, dolphins are pretty
incredible creatures. And they have some really incredible characteristics and
mental Uh, they have an amazing mental capacity. Yeah, and
(02:32):
their mammals like us, which not you know, it's probably
not apparent to everybody at first, but um, they presided
me they're young for the first eight months of life.
Um and and I think that we can't help but
find similarities between ourselves and dolphins, particularly when we think
about their language capabilities. And again this is sort of
the whole like Flipper thing John C. Lily thing. These
(02:54):
are the people or the ways that showed us that
that dolphins can really talk to us in a certain way.
And you think about it this way, this is pretty amazing.
This is pointed out in the movie The Cove. Dolphins
can understand sign language, which okay, yeah, great, so can chimpanzees.
But think about this. Dolphins do not have hands fingers.
(03:15):
It's true, they don't. They don't even have the reference material,
which is so interesting to think that they would be
able to take all this sign language. Um and again,
which we already know we created based on our finger system, right,
and we've got the number system based on our finger system.
A lot of language is based on our number system.
But these guys know. Wow, so they can't type either.
(03:37):
Like if I were to call them out on the
blogs and like talk a lot of snack dolphins are
gonna type, what are they gonna do? They're just gonna go.
They've got that brain computer interface though, so they should
be blogging soon. Oh, the the brain computer interface. Yeah,
we'll get to um. Yeah they are, they are. Well.
We should also mention the whole cute factor really quick,
(03:59):
because even though I'm not convinced that they are cute
per se, they do have that sort of freaky smile. Look,
they kind of look like they're smiling. They have a
permo smile. Yeah, And I tried to get to the
bottom of business here with you about this, Like what
it was that freaked you out about? It was the
Uncanny Valley effect. Maybe just because it's a Permo smile.
I mean, it's cute. How can you not know it's
(04:19):
But it's like it is kind of a permo smile.
It's kind of like the joker or something. Or it's
also it's like I've had this conversation with my wife
before about our cat where I would be like, what
would it be like if the cat could smile? Or laugh,
and we both agree that would be really creepy. So
the idea of an animal smiling or even appearing like
we kind of flow with it. With dogs, I guess,
not that dogs actually smile, but they kind of have,
(04:42):
you know, when they're panting, they open their mouth and
we're like, oh, he looks happy. They got the ears
that yet it works more with them, But but with
the dolphin, I'm just kind of like, what's they smiling about?
What's it's? You know, what is this idea of fun
or humor? It probably doesn't line up with my idea
of fun or humor. Well, regardless of still on the
pantheon of cuteness next to unicorns, kittens, and horses. Yes,
(05:06):
so it's uh, if we turn back the clock on
the dolphin, if we start looking at where they came from,
they of course did not come from another planet. Uh.
There there, let's go ahead and dismiss that right out.
They are not um, you know, here to study us
um and report back to the mothership. But they did
evolve from um other forms of life, as everything else has.
(05:31):
And if you do you turn back the clock current,
according to current studies, you end up with a very
strange looking creature that I will I'll either put a
picture of this on the accompanying blog post for this
podcast or for this episode, or I will um, I'll
embed it or something just so you can see it.
Because the the earlier form of life that modern dolphins
(05:52):
evolved from looks kind of like a uh, how do
it describe the Yes, the opposite A cute kind of
like a hyena hippo, Like a hyena hip and a
hippo had a baby, and that baby like had some
plastic surgery done when it grew up. It's a look
more like an alligator. Yeah, I can I see that.
(06:12):
There's like the head has the features of the hippo
sort of around the eyes and in the cheekbones if
you could say that they don't know that they have
cheek bones. Um, but yeah, the rest of the body
sort of looks like an alligator. Yeah. If they had
had like chicken coops forty eight million years ago, this
thing looks like it would just eat chickens NonStop. Like
there's something kind of fox like about it. Yeah, And
it's surprising when you think about the dolphin today, which
is sleek and I won't say cuddly, because they're not cuddly,
(06:35):
but they're playful. And again they've got the permo smile.
This is the opposite of that. Yeah, this is kind
of have the more of a sort of a perma
snarl going on. And uh so this creature again forty
eight million years ago, it would have been a semi
aquatic herbivore um with the name the end or something
(06:55):
like that. Yeah, endoyas let's call it called that. And
it was actually a related to the hippo. I mean,
the hippo is a is a fairly close evolutionary relative
to all cessations. Yeah, and uh, I mean this is
this is the group of of the hoof first, I
guess you could say, right, the hoof ones and um.
(07:18):
As a result of this information, um, and this is
the best gas right too. We don't have Yeah, we
all just based on theory. Yeah, but some people have said, oh,
they've evolved from dogs. This is not true. You'll see
that sometimes, um, you know obviously on the internet out there.
But because you know of their connection with rhinos um
and and you know obviously like an alligators as well,
(07:39):
this you know, you see some similarities in terms of
starting out as being a shallow waters forager. This is
this is what the dolphin was doing, hanging out, you know,
beach cheer in the water. And then you know, throughout
the years became a bit of a more sleeker version
of this self, right as as natural selection kicked then
(08:00):
and uh what in the the more aquatic variations were
the ones that survived. Yeah, but we should probably talk
a little bit more too about the features of dolphins.
They bill anticetations right along with porpoises and whales, and um,
these guys can measure as long as thirteen feet in
weigh one thousand pounds, so they can get up there. Um,
(08:21):
they come superficially resemble fishes we've talked about. They are
mammals um, and they travel and pods of up to
a dozen dolphins, which is interesting because this is the
sort of community that they're in. It's not just that
they're hanging out that this is usually their families that
they're traveling along with. And we'll talk a little bit
more about that later and how it's sort of um
(08:42):
makes us better understand them as being social creatures like us.
And uh, they have pretty big brains too. Yeah, based
on m R. I scans, we can you know, we've
really been able to get in there and go elbow
deep into these fantastic delphin dolphin brains and uh, they're
they're big relative to their body size, and they have
(09:03):
a highly convoluted neo cortex, which is a structure that
also allows for self awareness, processing of complex emotions, and
they we we tend to see their U. The evolution
of the dolphin brain um as its occurring in various
growth spurts throughout history, Like the first big jump would
(09:26):
have happened about thirty nine million years ago, and this
is when you had primitive dolphins that have you know,
they've they've they've diverged, they've shot off, they're they're living
it up in the water. And uh, this is around
the time that echolocation became really big. And yeah, I
think of bats, except it's you know, it's a it's
a little more complex than that. But they're using sound
(09:46):
to see things, using sound to hunt. And we've observed
some remarkable um examples of this, of of them using
it to to track prey and actually sort of heard
them in UM. It's U really incredible. It's very sophisticated.
So now or basically Yeah, there's actually one study that
they had a couple of dolphins and um, it was
(10:09):
predicated basically on them being able to get some fish.
So each of them had to hit a letter on
the right or left and they had to mimic each
other and then they'd get the fish. They'd be rewarded
with that. Well, they did that over and over again,
and then they did it in different rooms where they
couldn't see each other, and finally they did it to
the point where they could only hear each other. And again,
if the other dolphin does not hit the correct button,
(10:32):
then they're not going to get the fish. And so
what they observed is that even in another room that
they would hear the dolphins say something to the other dolphin,
which then was construted as hey hit the left lever, buddy,
or something along this line, so we can get this fish.
And in fact, they would do this over and over again.
And it just shows you that the power of echo
(10:54):
location is for them, um, so incredible and used in
ways that you know, they could particularly just be sort
of blind and be able to see using this sonar
and um, you also draw dragged in the social uh
connotation there because that was another evolutionary spurt in brain
(11:16):
size that occurred they think about fifteen million years ago
as they developed a more social lifestyle and uh and
social interactions that takes a fair amount of brain power.
So the brain again began to grow inside become became
more complex as they had to us as the dolphins
that were better capable of navigating uh, their social structure
(11:39):
were the ones to survive and become the species. Yeah,
we know in humans too that we develop our neo
cortex in part as a way to to deal with
our social situations, including parenting. And again there's another parallel
because you do see dolphins staying with your young for
two three years raising them, and again there's a whole
feeding thing for eight months at the very big and
(12:00):
then traveling as a family. Yeah, you'll typically see the
vacation spots. Um. They're always kind of loud though, because
they're they're taking photos and yeah, yeah, I know, the
loud shirts. What are you gonna do? Um? But you know,
so that's that's a I think, just a little glimpse
of their intelligence. Um. And again there their brain size
(12:22):
that second only to humans, so they trump everybody else
in terms of brain size umnix for us. Yeah, but
we don't use the echolocation to find things. So true true,
and we should say to that a lot of their
brain is uh, that brain space is committed for echolocation, right,
that's why one of the reasons why it's so large. Yeah,
(12:44):
it's one of these intruations we get into and looking
at any species though where in analyzing an animals intelligence,
you all, we always inevitably fall back on the human model.
So just because because one animal, the human is capable
of reading Moby dick and uh and the doll and isn't,
doesn't mean that the dolphin is stupid. It's just a
different type of intelligence, right, I mean and and and
(13:05):
actually Mobi dick, right, I mean one could be reading it,
the other could be just you know, terrorizing ships, right.
And I mean that's interesting that you bring up what
is intelligence because we've talked about it before. We've talked
about it is pattern recognition and the ability to try
to predict the future and pre plan And you see
this in dolphins again and again. We've talked about this
before about dolphins using sponges on the tips of their
(13:27):
noses to forage on the ocean floor. And the reason
they do that is so that in case there's some
sort of creature there, it doesn't like snap out at
them and uh you know, scar them or take a
chunk of skin off, and it allows them to kind
of see where the creatures are without getting hurt. And
obviously this takes pre planning. Yeah, I mean, it's too
of you. So it's a it's a fairly advanced technique. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
(13:51):
And there's another and good example I really like this
is from dolphin researcher Peter Rand Folkins. Uh. He tells
the story of out how Marine World Africa, USA. They
had trained the dolphins to retrieve trash and bring it
to the trainer and then they get a reward fish
of course. And um, what they saw is that the
(14:13):
dolphins would clean up the area spick and span, and
yet pieces of trash they would still find and bring
up to the trainer and get their fish. And so
they were saying, I have this as possible. This area
is completely clean. And what they had found is that
one dolphin had begun to put a stash of um
trash into this little trash bag that was on the
(14:35):
side that and how incredible was that that the dolphin
actually planned for that saw the trash bag and was like, Um,
that's gonna be my storehouse. That's going to make sure
that I am always knee deep in fish. Well, you know,
this gets us into the area of more into the
area of what can we have make dolphins do, which
after this brief break, we're going to discuss in detail.
(15:01):
This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow.
All right, so we're back and let's talk about what
dolphins can do for us because as humans, you know,
recognizing an animal and animals intelligence is great, but can
we use it to fight wars or to do work
(15:23):
that we don't want to do? I mean, sadly, a
lot of it comes down to that, or or even
what can it do to entertain me? Yeah? I know,
I'm I'm just thinking that one respect. They're really lucky
that they are no longer really dwelling animals and they're
in the water, because we probably would have them on
trash detail a lot of the highways. I can picture
them in their little orange jumpsuits. Um well, one of
(15:47):
the the the first efforts to make or well convinced
I don't know. It depends how you look at it.
Dolphins to do thanks for us UM back in Sea
Lab two, which we discussed in our Life Aquatic podcast.
This was UM at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco,
and this was an underwater laboratory environment. Uh, most of
(16:11):
the tests they were doing that we're just figuring out, Hey,
can people work, um, say, at a depth of two
feet for thirty straight days? Can they you know, can
they can they carry out experiments? Are they gonna go
crazy or become sick? Yeah? It was human centric, Yeah,
very very human centric. They also experiment with the trained
por porpoise named Toufee to do courier work between the
(16:31):
habitat um on the ocean floor and the surface, and
instead of using a hose to provide the humans with
the all the supplies from the surface, the Navy sometimes
used toughie to bring things down, things like male tools
and even bottles of soda. So I'm not saying it
wasn't kind of demeaning to the dolphin, but um, but
(16:52):
it was based in pure research saying it was sort
of beyond what they should have been doing, or well,
I mean they should have been doing like watercolors. Well,
well it gets weirder when you when you start looking
at with the the name because in you know, the U. S.
Navy was more into like, all right, well they can
fetch a soda, but can they do things we actually
need them to do. Because we can get soda, we
(17:13):
can we can provide soda for our submarine. Right, we
can do that. But they do give them to find
explosive minds, right, yeah, so that was a big deal
in the sixties. Um mind sweeping. Yeah. They weren't disarming mines.
They weren't going down like you know, bread busting it
open and finding blue wires and red wires or anything
like that because again no hands. But they did teach
(17:34):
them how to how to find the mines and then
they would reward them with with a you know, a
nice fish treat. Have you ever seen a clue here?
Fish really big In the dolphin world, Yeah, yeah. Another example,
and this is again the US Navy is uh and
this is from Slate dot Com and The Tail and
the Dolphin by Daniel Anger. Um it is quote. Dolphins
and sea lions are also trained to use bite plate
(17:56):
systems to mark or capture water borne intruders. When they
spot an enemy diver underwater, they can poke them with
a bite plate to release a strobe light beacon, presumably
so someone can find that person. And they might also
carry c shaped clamps that snaps shut on a diver's leg.
Once a dolphin cuffs the diver, it turns back to
(18:16):
its hamler with a tether line. Oh my goodness, can
you imagine getting cuffed by a dolphin? Yeah, it's like
Miami Vice there. I mean, it's uh, it's amazing, it is.
I mean about the only thing more amazing is if
the tether were actually attached to the dolphin, right, Yeah, yeah,
that's true, and they could just bring them in and
they had a little dolphin car and yeah, but I
like the idea that because you don't want the dolphin
(18:37):
then to go rogue and like just drag the person
out to see you want him to hand him over
to the authorities. Now, but human authority. It's true, Yeah,
it's true. You know who knows what they're capable? Evenue.
It makes me think of The Onion, which has a
couple of very funny dolphin headlines, but one of them
is dolphins develop opposable thumbs and the whole article, which
is kind of funny, but actually the article is hilarious.
(19:00):
It talks about how now that they have a postable thombs,
humans are toast. Yeah, they're gonna take us over. They're
like I said, if they were to have hands, it's
like who knows exactly what they want? Um, because we
can't talk to them and talk to him. Yes, this
is this is really interesting. Um. So if you go
back to the nineties, you had this guy named Lewis
(19:21):
Herman and he worked at the uh Kualo Basin Marine
Mammal Laboratory in Honolulu, and uh he discovered the bottom
of those dolphins can keep track of over a hundred
different words, and they can. They can they can roll
with different commands that use these words in different forms
like the The example that I ran across was like fristance.
(19:42):
You should be able to say, hey, can you bring
that surfboard to me? And they would understand that, and
then they would equally understand hey can you bring me
to that surfboard? Which the difference is obvious to us,
but we're talking about I mean, the English isn't a
second language, like language is the second language for the dolphin.
You know, I think if you're trying to learn German
and how difficult that is because the placement affords and
(20:04):
I'm doing it as an as a dolphin, right yea,
with several languages, because your trainer could be German, right yeah,
and really fascinating. Um is this more recent approach and
one of one of them. This is mainly a dolphin
researcher by the name of Denise Herzing, and she's collaborating
with Thad Starner, who's an artificial intelligence researcher at the
(20:26):
Atlanta Zone, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the projects called
Cessation Hearing and Telemetry or CHAT. I think maybe they
can chat first. I don't know, I'm just stand but basically,
the the the ideas really neat here. It's all right,
so dolphins kind of had they have their own language.
And I'm doing quote marks with my fingers because it's
(20:50):
this is a whole different discussion about what constitutes a
language and all. But they have they can clearly um
communicate via sound. They use sound in very clever ways
and often in way that we can't even fully understands,
Like they they can produce sounds that frequencies up to
two kiloherts, around ten times as high as the highest
pitch that a human can hear, and in so many
(21:11):
different directions to you, right, which makes it again hard
to sort of tag what that vocalization might mean because
you don't really know as humans, we don't really know
what it's being directed to. Yeah, they occupy just a
different sonic landscape than we do as a species. So
while the past effort was let's teach them some human language,
you know, and then that met met with very limited success,
(21:33):
and we haven't made a lot of strides towards understanding
their language because again, a lot of us out of
our hearing. So this effort is is kind of about
developing a new language. Like meeting them halfway, right, it's fascinating.
I don't know. Um, they're they're recording interpreting in the
responding to the dolphin sounds. This is um. This is
from an article and new scientists talk with the dolphin
(21:55):
via underwater translation machine. UM and starting his students are
built a prototype device featuring a smartphone sized computer and
to hydrophone capable of detecting the full range of dolphins sounds. Yeah,
and then also you know, it's about detecting the patterns
within their sound cataloging detecting um IT says a diver
will carry the computer in a waterproofed case worn across
(22:18):
the chest, and LEDs embedded around the diver's mask will
light up to show where a sound picked up by
the hydrophones originated from. The diver will also have a
handheld device, the x as a combination of mouse and
keyboard for selecting what kind of sound to make in response.
So these are sort of the first steps in trying
to uh they're calling it co create the language, which
(22:39):
I think is funny because it'llaboration right because they've had
a lot of meetings with the dolphins and and they're
into it. Um So, Herzing and Starner will actually start
testing this system on wild Atlantic spotted dolphins in the
middle of this year, and at first, divers will play
back one of the eight words coined by the team
to mean like seaweed or bow wave ride for example.
(23:01):
Um in the software will then listen to see if
the dolphins mimic them. I don't know, we'll see I'm
I'm I'm curious, like I instantly am thinking though of
like this outrageous scenario where we make first contact with
the dolphins. Yeah yeah, Like what would like on one hand,
are they're going to say, greetings human, we I am
so glad that you can we can finally communicate as
(23:22):
a as as brothers, and we wish to convey to
you this this message of environmental responsibility. Or would it
be like that's that's my my erudite dolphin voice. Or
would it be like, yo, man, do you want give
me that fish? I'll totally go get your mind if
you give me that fish. Yeah yeah, or like I'll
totally tell you about gray matter, but yeah, I want
um a thousand barrels of fish right now? Uh sorry,
(23:45):
gray matter dark matter matter? Yeah? Either one one mistranslate.
One mistranslation between dolphin and human language. And then they
go out and start harvesting brains. That's the problem with
their newly sprung up as. They're like, they want us
to get gray matter. Do you mean in the dark matter,
all that dark matter we store at bottom of the ocean,
(24:05):
And they're like, no, they's a great matter. Like all right,
fish the fish, let's start harvesting brains. Let's do it. Yeah, yeah,
next thing you Knew documentary. Um, okay, so they are
very much like us, right, we've sort of discussed why
big brains mammals. They like hanging out with your young
traveling in pods, and they're altruistic, yes, which makes sense
(24:27):
for us um in evolutionary sense, right, because if we
do something nice for each other, then we kind of
help stabilize the species and we promote success as a whole.
But why in the world would they help humans? I
want to know why would they help That's the thing,
because you can understand them, like, you know, looking after
other dolphins in the pod because the pod needs to survive.
But you know, why are they helping out, say human
(24:49):
fishermen um in in South America? Where the where the
dolphins actually heard the fish in towards the nets? Or
why are they cool with you know, fetching mine ens
or or slapping handcuffs on strange divers. I mean, is
it really that that little fish treat is that important
to them? I don't know. I mean you have heard
(25:09):
before of people being rescued by dolphins, right, yeah, or
of surfers going you know, being about to be attacked
by a shark, and then you know sort of t
boned to the side by a dolphin, you know, a
thwarting the attack. So I don't know. I think I
think that's probably one of the reasons why they're such
an enigma to us, because again there's this connection seems
to happen um with us. But also like the video
(25:32):
you sent me, which was like, oh, yeah, shootest thing
I've ever seen of dolphin nuzzling with a kitten on
a boat. Yes, and I will definitely embed this on
the accompanying blog post for this for this article. But yeah,
you see like a cat walking over to the edge
of the swimming pool, or it's not swimming pool, it's
a dolphin tank, but walking to the edge of the tank,
and the dolphin comes up and they're like, like the
(25:53):
dolphins nuzzling the top of the cat's head the same
way that you know you need cat owners out there
likely to do to their own pet cat. It's straight
and yeah, it's it's very weird the way that the
dolphin does it because it's it's the cat obviously is
into it, and it's right on that part of the
head that the cat loves. Um. So there's that, and
then um there the other saying, you know, and just
(26:14):
I feel like we've already sort of be smirched dinosaurs
and talking about their sex lives, so we might as
well talk about dolphins. Turns out that these are randy folks. Yeah. Well,
it's not like they're trying to keep it private or anything.
They don't care. They're out there doing it. They have
sex stuff sex, not necessarily to procreate. And this is
so weird too. They actually can develop HPV, which is
(26:37):
human people of a virus. Uh. There was an interview
with um R Flo from Science Friday, and he was
talking to a couple of folks about this. Um. It
was an interview with Dr Hendrik Nolan's the University of Florida.
And let me just read it real quick. This is
a transcript of this. Uh, there was, It says from Plateau.
(26:57):
Another question you were intriguing me a boy talking about
the sea of viruses that are swimming in the ocean.
And one of those I was thinking about and I've
heard about, is this genital papuoma virus. UM. I know
there's a human papulovirus that might lead to cancer. Is
there something similar in that sea of viruses that might
be affecting the dolphins, and doctor Nolan says there is,
and it probably doesn't come from the c order. It
(27:17):
may be related to their sexual behavior maybe, which is
purely hypothesis. But no, dolphins do get genital papul imma
virus infections, and what is actually unique about them is
that they're the only other species other than humans that
we see multiple type of infections at the same time.
Um so, But the weird thing about is that that
(27:37):
doesn't actually develop into cervical cancer for dolphins. And that's
a big question from why that might happen in a
human and not in dolphins. In yeah, so, I mean
STD awareness campaigns, I think for dolphins. And well, one thing,
I've brought this up before and I will probably bring
it up in every discussion about dolphins for the rest
(27:58):
of my life. But um I the reports of Okay,
only a few people on this Earth can afford a
private submarine that allows him to go underwater, Branson, We're
looking at you and have and and the engage in
human sex in front of a an underwater plan again,
Richard Branson. So these people have reported dolphins coming and
(28:20):
watching this activity through the glass, which again that that's
just why is this happening? Why, what does the dolphin care?
What does the dolphin possibly get out of? Is it
just because there's motion and they're just curious? I mean,
I guess I would tend to decide with that versus
any kind of perversion on the dolphins. Well, I mean,
I think about John C. Lily's experiment too with his
(28:40):
female research assistant who lived in the flooded half for
two weeks with the dolphin. It began to expose his
genitals to her and began to rub up against her.
And I won't go into all the other things that did,
but uh, clearly like there's there's an interest in interspecies,
uh you know, going songs. Well, again, they're just rant
(29:02):
any importness in a storm, right, So I guess that's
I mean, I guess that's their attitude. Yeah, they have
a T shirt that says that, Yeah, well there you go.
We we managed to end that on again dolphins, sex
and STDs. And they still have a cheap smile though,
Yeah they do. And uh, of course we have a
lot of information on dolphins on the house stuff works
(29:23):
dot com website. If you just go to the home page.
There you'll find that the gold, big old search bar.
Just drop dolphins in there and just back in the
results that you will receive Heaven. Yeah, so they're more
information awaits you there. But hey, what awaits me now
is some listener mail. See what we have here? Ah,
(29:43):
here's one from Chris. Chris writes in and says, uh,
and he's responding to our episode about the five finger
evolutionary discount, about the the five fingers that we have
and that we share with just about every other animal
on the planet. And he says, today I was cutting
wood and I accidentally cut my pinky. When I went inside,
(30:06):
I put a band aid on it to keep it safe,
and I proceeded with my day. Before bed, I faithfully
brush my teeth, and an attempt to keep my band
aid intact, I tried not to use my pinkie, so
I stuck it out. Have you ever tried to brush
your teeth without your pinky? Let me tell you it
is really hard. When it comes to the turning to
get every single spot of tooth nice and clean, it
(30:27):
tends to be difficult. Indeed, we do need five fingers.
Um Chris from Manitoba. And then Chris adds ps. If
we didn't have pinkies, then when we drank tea, we
wouldn't be able to do the whole pinkies up routine.
See uh see they do come they do come in
very handy so here here. So that's some some excellent
research there from Chris uh And indeed you find this too.
(30:49):
I've found this to be the case. You know, you
you tend to discount some of your fingers. You're like pinkies.
I don't know what there for. You know, they're just
hanging out there on the end. But you you nick
your finger, you end up having to throw a band
aid over it, and and it's like totally inconveniences everything
you're doing throughout the day. Well, you become aware of
it all the time when you go to open a
door knob or heats, you know, brushing his teeth and yeah,
all of a sudden, you're like, I am more aware
(31:11):
of my fingers than I've ever been in my entire life,
and the fact that one of them is throbbing in
pain right now. And here's another bit of listener mail
from our listener Tom. And Tom writes in and says, uh, hey,
stuff to blow your Mind podcast. I can't say enough
how much you to enjoy your podcast along with the
Tech Stuff podcast. Indeed another fine listening choice. And uh,
actually it actually educates me as I drive among corn
(31:33):
fields on the way to work. Um, I tend to
listen to the episodes in Big Old Bunches. So I
am writing after listening to the podcast on music changing
our minds and changing our minds the hard way, So
that yeah, these were the one dealing with what happens
in our brain when we listen to music, and the
other what happens to our mind or the expression of
ourself when you say, gets struck by lightning or have
(31:54):
an iron rod fire up through your prefrontal cortex. Right,
how does that change the sense of yourself? Right? So
he says, when hearing that the music can actually alter
our moves and behavior and and possibly for the positive
and not the kiss army way my mom warned me
about my mind, immediately jumped to Bill and Ted's excellent Adventure,
another fine work. Yes, Uh, the scientific evidence actually makes
(32:16):
it seem movie plausible that the quote unquote perfect band
like Wild Stallions could actually bring about world peace. Awesome,
So that I that's that's interesting. I hadn't really made
the connection there between Bill and Ted and uh and
those topics. That's right. And then all everybody's neurons just
firing at the same time to the wild styling and
(32:37):
you know, feeling this unity and when this saving the
wall there you go. Well, hey, if you have any
strange movie connections to make, you know, I'm always game
for those, and you can share them with us at
at our Facebook account or our Twitter. We are Blow
the Mind on both of those and we try and
update those with all sorts of cool links and whatnot,
and you can always drop us a line at Blow
(32:59):
the Mind. That has to fork dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. VI is it
how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
of our homepage. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has
a ride. Download it today on iTunes
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