Dolphins Are Dumber Than Rats

I find this story kind of amusing. For years the environwacko types have been telling us how smart dolphins are, and have even alleged that they're smarter than humans. Rush Limbaugh has often had fun with that notion, and I remember him saying "if dolphins are so smart, where are their hospitals"?

Today there's an article in the Globe and Mail which suggests that not only are dolphins less intelligent than humans, they're not even as smart as goldfish:

Dolphins and whales are dumber than goldfish and don't have the know-how to match a rat, new research from South Africa has revealed.

For years, humans have assumed the large brains of dolphins meant the mammals were highly intelligent.

Paul Manger from Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand, however, says it is not intelligence that created the dolphin super-brain – it's the cold.

In order to survive underwater, these warm-blooded animals developed brains that have a lot of the insulating material – called glia – but not too many neurons, which is the grey stuff that counts for reasoned thinking.

”Goldfish can solve problems that dolphins can't. When a goldfish jumps out of its bowl, it's thinking past its immediate environment. Dolphins don't have the cognitive leap,” Mr. Manger said in a telephone interview Thursday.

”Dolphins can do some things, but they have to be trained to do them. That's more of a reflection of low-intelligence.”

Flipper, when asked for comment, reportedly said "D'oh!".