I watched the excellent documentary "The Cove" a few weeks ago, and I highly recommend watching it. Though the film did fill me with dread and outrage (as intended), ironically, the portrayal of the brutal slaughter of dolphins by Japanese fishermen convinced me that dolphins are not nearly as smart as many people would like to convince us of.
Here's why: Imagine there were one particular mountain valley tucked away in some corner of the world, and while human beings could range all over the vastness of this earth unharmed, if they ventured into that valley they would be killed. In that valley there was a race of essentially invincible beings that would herd any wayward human beings into a side canyon and spear them to death.
How would the human race react to that? Let's assume that mounting a military attack and killing the invincible beings weren't possible. Well, first of all, we'd put up signs and fences and maybe even sentries to warn people not to go into that valley. We'd tell our children about the danger, and pass the knowledge of the invincible murderous monsters on, generation to generation. If people did go in there and got killed we'd cover the event in detail on TV, as a warning to others (like Shark Week). Even really stupid people would know not to go into the "valley of the stabby monsters."
Well, if Dolphins are so smart, and they have such good communication and advanced social structure, then why haven't the many dolphins that have personally witnessed the slaughter at "The Cove" and escaped (the movie shows dolphins escaping) managed to warn other dolphins not to go there?
Honestly, if dolphins were anywhere near as smart as humans and were anywhere near as ruthless, they not only would have prevented the slaughter, but would have mounted a commando raid wherein expert jumping dolphins would have trained to jump out of the water, knock the fishermen out of their little boats, then beaten and dragged them down into the cove until they were drowned. And I'm being serious about this. Human beings wouldn't put up with that shit.
Other observed dolphin behavior, such as dolphins killing each other and attacking sharks to defend swimming humans does prove that they have the wherewithal to act in both self-preservation, and in the defense of others, even to violence. But they still get speared in the cove. That tells me they're not that smart.
The problem with your example is grouping all dolphins together.
This reminds me of some prominent speaker's example of space Aliens testing for human intelligence by beaming up 100 people and assigning them the task of building a computer.
You'd get very different results if you beamed up 100 random people from a shopping mall, vs. 100 random people from MIT.
How smart would YOU look if you were raised by yourself in a zoo habitat? There's an enormous amount of "intelligence" which depends on cultural transmission of information at specific developmental periods. Language is one well-known example; IIRC, if a child is neglected linguistically around the age of 2-3, they can't make up for it later and will never quite acquire a "human" level of language.
What if the adults of your tribe were wiped out, and the children grew up and had a makeshift society afterward? This is effectively what has happened repeatedly with whale and dolphin pods.
Further, dolphins don't all know each other. So tribe X may not inform tribe Y of a dangerous location.
Dolphins who have knowledge of the slaughter may avoid it in the future. They may try to keep their pod away from it. Maybe the pod doesn't believe them, and the leaders "march" in blithely, as happens with humans all the time. Or maybe there are no survivors to warn others. Or maybe they are traumatized and become loners and don't talk to anyone after that.
As for your "commando" example, there are countless counterexamples where humans DON'T join up to go on the offensive, because of personal risk.
And there are countless examples where humans keep doing something dangerous where there is a high probability of getting killed.
Children are highly intelligent, but innocence and lack of experience can make you an easy target for a predator. And there are institutions, like "tough love" camps where parents ship their kids, some of which have a horrendous history of child abuse, and yet they still operate.
Where are the commando raids on Catholic priests? Guess humans aren't too smart.
Lack of collective memory does diminish an intelligence rating.
Humans didn't have recorded history for tens of thousands of years (maybe a million depending what science you follow, frontal lobes and all that) and were doomed to repeat the same mistakes (heck we still do the same massive mistakes with lots of recorded history).
Humans have had spoken-word history long before written. Native Americans for example. Dolphins may have something similar, perhaps a "show and tell" of sorts, who knows, but I admit it's obviously not as evolved if they can't avoid an annual slaughter.
Another extremely intelligent creature is the octopus, I wouldn't mind them having some protection as well. But they aren't as "sexy" as dolphins so I don't expect that to be forthcoming any century soon.
I'd guess communication methods available to dolphins aren't as good as those available to humans. I think all aural communication that is available to dolphins is available to humans, and yet we use mostly speech and gesticulation, both of which seem to be either unavailable or very limited for dolphins.
As for the octopus, by quickly browsing the usual suspects you can find that quite a lot of people find them much more sexy than dolphins, but let's not get to deep into that.
While dolphins lack the communication methods available to humans, I believe that they have the same methods available to them that whales possess. Whales have a pretty sophisticated "culture" that is encapsulated in the variying songs of different species and among the various geographic and tribal groupings within a particular species.
Yes, I know about that. I just doubt that it's as effective at expressing precise meanings as methods available for humans ("area within 100km radius from 33.593316 135.943022 is to be considered unsafe," and let's not get started on bordering the area with 3 meter high fences topped with barbed wire).
Do I need to list all the harm people do to themselves and their environment every second of every day? Humans most certainly do not always do what is best for them, and we have a lot more cultural support these days than dolphins do to help us make the right choices. If dolphins had technology, maybe they'd look at us and say, "Look how many of these dumb beasts intentionally inhale poisonous smoke."
Human beings expect other human beings to act with a similar moral code. There have been plenty of examples of groups herding other human beings into areas explicitly designed for slaughter. Humans warned each other, but the slaughter still persisted. Even foreign governments did not think the slaughter was extensive as claimed because of the inhumanity of it.
Human beings will put up with a lot of shit, it even says so in the declaration of independence.
"..all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cove_%28film%29], the dolphins are herded into the cove, so they don't go in there voluntarily. Also, apparently it happens only once a year, so 364 days out of 365 that cove would be a safe place.
There is a HUGE flaw in your analogy here: "If people did go in there and got killed we'd cover the event in detail on TV, as a warning to others (like Shark Week). Even really stupid people would know not to go into the "valley of the stabby monsters."
Dolphins don't have TV. They have no technology, apart from using sponges to protect their noses.
Imagine that, back before the Stone Age, you were a primitive hunter-gatherer, and you had to warn the entire world population about the valley of stabby invincible guys, since you were the only survivor of the last massacre there. How the hell would you do it? Who would even believe you?
This is a specious argument. We might just as easily argue that it shows dolphins have a predilection for suicidal thrill-seeking, or that ti's a dangerous initiation ritual that only the bravest and cleverest dolphins can survive or (insert bizarre human social practice here).
Incidentally, you'll be glad to know that dolphin slaughter is becoming increasingly unpopular in Japan due to both high mercury levels in meat (and in the residents of whaling communities), and an increasing sentiment among the Japanese public that dolphins are cuter than they are tasty. At this point they're keeping it up for appearance's sake and to placate an increasingly small nationalist fringe that's still arguing they could have won WW2.
If they go into the cove and is killed, how would the others know that going into the cove is dangerous?
There are plenty of examples of human beings dying in their home and no one noticing because they aren't missed by anyone. The same would happen if an entire social group of dolphins just disappeared. I think you're being a bit unfair to the dolphins here.
Here's why: Imagine there were one particular mountain valley tucked away in some corner of the world, and while human beings could range all over the vastness of this earth unharmed, if they ventured into that valley they would be killed. In that valley there was a race of essentially invincible beings that would herd any wayward human beings into a side canyon and spear them to death.
How would the human race react to that? Let's assume that mounting a military attack and killing the invincible beings weren't possible. Well, first of all, we'd put up signs and fences and maybe even sentries to warn people not to go into that valley. We'd tell our children about the danger, and pass the knowledge of the invincible murderous monsters on, generation to generation. If people did go in there and got killed we'd cover the event in detail on TV, as a warning to others (like Shark Week). Even really stupid people would know not to go into the "valley of the stabby monsters."
Well, if Dolphins are so smart, and they have such good communication and advanced social structure, then why haven't the many dolphins that have personally witnessed the slaughter at "The Cove" and escaped (the movie shows dolphins escaping) managed to warn other dolphins not to go there?
Honestly, if dolphins were anywhere near as smart as humans and were anywhere near as ruthless, they not only would have prevented the slaughter, but would have mounted a commando raid wherein expert jumping dolphins would have trained to jump out of the water, knock the fishermen out of their little boats, then beaten and dragged them down into the cove until they were drowned. And I'm being serious about this. Human beings wouldn't put up with that shit.
Other observed dolphin behavior, such as dolphins killing each other and attacking sharks to defend swimming humans does prove that they have the wherewithal to act in both self-preservation, and in the defense of others, even to violence. But they still get speared in the cove. That tells me they're not that smart.