Vanity a good sign of dolphin intelligence

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Dolphins were able to recognize themselves, and their tattoos, in mirrors.

For much of her 30-year career, American psychologist Diana Reiss pursued her "usual role as a pure scientist." But her research into the consciousness of dolphins has led her to become a "scientist-advocate."

As she explains in this, her fascinating first book, the turning point occurred in 2001 when she learned of mass dolphin kills occurring in Taiji, Japan.

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In a yearly "drive," hundreds of these beautiful ocean dwellers are herded into a blind dead-end cove and slaughtered by Japanese commercial fishers.

It was Reiss who persuaded National Geographic cameraman Louie Psihoyos to make the 2009 Academy Award-winning documentary The Cove, which tells the story of the Taiji slaughter. The film is a call to action to halt the mass dolphin kills.

Reiss directs the dolphin research program at the National Aquarium in Baltimore and teaches college in New York.

While acting as the science adviser for The Cove, Reiss still offers an opposing opinion about dolphins in aquariums and suggests the movie "attacks all aquariums in one swooping condemnation."

She firmly points out that the film oversimplifies the problems and in fact damages the overall cause.

Reiss's research has focused on dolphin intelligence and the key question "do animals think?"

This book clearly answers this question in the affirmative. From the first chapter, entitled Minds in the Water, the reader is taken into the dolphin's world. Her wonderful stories of the dolphin's ability to navigate using echolocation, the same system used by bats, to their talent for inventing their own "toys" demonstrates the intelligence she discovered.

Her explanation of the use of mirrors in her research is intriguing. Reiss sets out to find out if her dolphins Delphi and Pan "would recognize what they saw in the mirror was a reflection of themselves, not just other dolphins."

Reiss proves through her research mirrors and the application of tattoos on the dolphins that they do indeed possess a level of self-awareness similar perhaps to that of Homo sapiens.

The dolphins would rush to the mirror to view their latest tattoo. They would demonstrate that they indeed knew the tattoo's precise location by twisting and turning before the mirror to obtain the best view of themselves.

The book not only covers Reiss's research with hundreds of dolphins but also portrays the personal journey she undertook as she moved from a position of pure scientist to that of dolphin advocate.

During her career she has moved from asking the question "do animals think" to one she believes is more apropos: "How do animals think?"

Humans have long had an affinity for dolphins. The Greeks believed they were the monarchs of the deep. Reiss gives us a scientific, historical and emotional look at dolphins that will satisfy anyone's passion for an understanding of the intelligence of these remarkable creatures.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 7, 2012 J9