Do you know the intelligence quotient of dolphins? Everyone would know that dolphins are very smart animals, but this time, I would like to tell you about them more deeply. The size of dolphins' brain and that of human's brain are almost the same, and the flections on their brains are very high just ranking after those of humans. It is a kind of hard things to say whether human's or dolphin's intelligence quotient is higher, because as you heard before, their brains look so similar. There are even some scholars who say dolphins are superior in using the mode of life. Although there were three severe ice ages, it survived as changing into a perfect sea animal from a mammal. They always found new sources of food and shelter when it was difficult for them to just stay in their place. I wanted to mention the intelligence quotient of dolphins first, so that you would believe endless abilities of them, especially in communicating.
Dolphins usually use clicks, burst-pulse emissions, and whistles to communicate. First, clicks are used for echolocation, the dolphin's form of sonar. Dolphins are able to examine the creatures around him through sound, by listening to the echoes from objects struck by the clicks. Second, burst-pulse sounds indicate dolphins' emotional state, great pleasure to great anger. Third, whistle which is studied quite a lot, is used for the main communication. During the 1960s, many researchers tried to demonstrate if whistle is a form of language or not. The most of them were failures. For example, Douglas Richards, James Wolz, and Louis Herman, at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory at the university of Hawaii, noted that some dolphins follow other creatures' sounds and use them when they call others. Saying that it is one of the basic characteristics of a language, many researchers are trying to find out if dolphins can learn some of the fundamental defining characteristics of human language. There are many things that are not discovered yet, still dolphins are in the veil of mystery.
To add some special information about dolphins, dolphins need an interpreter when they want to communicate with other dolphins which live far away from them. Dolphins have about 700 kinds of pronunciation, and this implies the way of communicating can be different from place to place. For instance, living in the far east dolphins and living in the shore of America dolphins can not communicate with each other. As I said before, they would need an interpreter. The interpreter would be the dolphins which live in the middle of the Pacific, living between them. Sometimes the ability to express in various ways makes them hard to give and get some information from other groups of dolphins.
We are not certain about the real ability of them. However, we know that they are very special among other animals, and that will be the reason why almost every zoo has a dolphin show, I think. Let us think them as our friends and let us protect them. Dolphin is the precious of sea.