Neuroscientist Lori Marino and a team of researchers explored the brain of a dead killer whale with an MRI and found an astounding potential for intelligence.
Killer whales, or orcas, have the second-biggest brains among all ocean mammals, weighing as much as 15 pounds. It's not clear whether they are as well-endowed with memory cells as humans, but scientists have found they are amazingly well-wired for sensing and analyzing their watery, three-dimensional environment.
Scientists are trying to better understand how killer whales are able to learn local dialects, teach one another specialized methods of hunting and pass on behaviors that can persist for generations -- longer possibly than seen with any other species except humans.
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Many cetaceans -- whales, dolphins and porpoises included -- have these abilities to some degree. But orcas learn local and complex languages that are retained for many generations. And their bio-sonar, or echolocation, abilities also amaze researchers.
Read more at:
http://phys.org/news187298115.html#jCp.
Orcas and dolphins swim and and hang out with their families all day, and manage to survive very well without killing their spirits serving Scrooge in order to live. Ravens fly around and play and find their food and water wherever, and hang out with their mates, babies and friends.
Many humans believe themselves to be superior to, and have dominion over, all the other beings in the world, while we're killing ourselves and taking all the other beings down with us, and the planet as well.
Maybe it's time to consider the possibility that we're really not nearly as smart, perceptive, wise, and all knowing as we think we are.
Everything is
connected.
Mitakuye Oyasin...
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