Dolphins Offer a Glimpse Into Brain Evolution

It is common knowledge that dolphins, apart from humans, are the smartest animals that we know of. They are the only other self-aware life form and they're cute, to boot. Every time I read about dolphins, I get excited to learn about how close to humans they really are. They possess learning skills similar to us, they use tools and mimicry, understand language and they can even negotiate. It sort of makes me wish I had one as a friend. Because of their intelligence, they can be seen as a link in the evolution of brain capabilities. There is a correlation in the relationship between brain size and body size that dolphins fit into quite well; humans have the largest brains in comparison with the size of their bodies, followed by dolphins and then chimpanzees.

When it comes to the evolution of human brains, they've progressively gotten larger and larger. This makes a lot of sense because the smarter we are, the more capable we are of adapting. Let's assume that dolphins are also following this evolutionary trend. Barring any catastrophes that devastate either humans or dolphins from the planet, the next 30 million years should be very interesting. Imagine a world where there are two different forms of highly intelligent life. Will the dolphins rule the sea the way we rule the land?

Here is a link to a very entertaining article about dolphins: Why dolphins are deep thinkers.
Here are a few excerpts:

Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on.

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One day, when a gull flew into her pool, she grabbed it, waited for the trainers and then gave it to them. It was a large bird and so the trainers gave her lots of fish. This seemed to give Kelly a new idea. The next time she was fed, instead of eating the last fish, she took it to the bottom of the pool and hid it under the rock where she had been hiding the paper. When no trainers were present, she brought the fish to the surface and used it to lure the gulls, which she would catch to get even more fish. After mastering this lucrative strategy, she taught her calf, who taught other calves, and so gull-baiting has become a hot game among the dolphins. 

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Scientists have observed a dolphin coaxing a reluctant moray eel out of its crevice by killing a scorpion fish and using its spiny body to poke at the eel. Off the western coast of Australia, bottlenose dolphins place sponges over their snouts, which protects them from the spines of stonefish and stingrays as they forage over shallow seabeds.

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At a dolphinarium, a person standing by the pool's window noticed that a dolphin calf was watching him. When he released a puff of smoke from his cigarette, the dolphin immediately swam off to her mother, returned and released a mouthful of milk, causing a similar effect to the cigarette smoke. Another dolphin mimicked the scraping of the pool's observation window by a diver, even copying the sound of the air-demand valve of the scuba gear while releasing a stream of bubbles from his blowhole.

Be sure to read the whole thing. It is quite enlightening and might make you wonder about the possibilities. It only frustrates me on one little level: I am very saddened by the knowledge that I wont be alive for the next 30 million years so that I can watch the dolphins evolve into the next intelligent species.