Facts about Dolphin Drive Hunts in Japan

During drive hunts, migrating pods of dolphins and other small whales are first panicked and confused by loud banging, then herded, by the hundreds, into shallow coves and butchered, one by one, by fishermen. Every year, some 20,000 small cetaceans of several species, some of which are endangered, including bottlenose dolphins, striped dolphins, spotted dolphins, Risso’s dolphins, short-finned pilot whales, white-sided dolphins and false killer whales, are killed or taken in the drives, sometimes illegally.

This cruel and inhumane practice is sanctioned and controlled by the Government of Japan, which claims that these animals compete with the fishermen and slaughtering them is a means of pest control, but no evidence for this claim exists. The dolphins are processed and used as pet food or fertilizer, and the government is encouraging the consumption of dolphin meat. In fact, the hunts would be economically unviable without the sale of live dolphins captured during the drives to dolphinariums in Asia and elsewhere.

There is abundant scientific evidence that drive hunts inflict incredible pain and suffering on highly intelligent, self-aware, and socially complex animals. The hunts have been universally condemned on both welfare and conservation grounds, but repeated requests to end them, from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and numerous other scientific and conservation organizations, have been ignored.

The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), the professional organization that represents over 1,200 zoos and aquariums around the world, and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) in the United States, have also condemned these hunts. WAZA explicitly prohibits member organizations from procuring animals from drive hunts. Now, marine scientists, WAZA, and AZA have joined with other non-governmental organizations to bring an immediate end to drive hunting.

Join us in our efforts by signing the petition.

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A new scientific paper published in an international journal sheds light on the previously disputed intelligence of whales and dolphins.

Whales and dolphins are indeed highly intelligent, as has long been believed – this is the conclusion of a new paper from Mark Simmonds, International Director of Science for WDCS. The research stands in stark contrast to some recent reports that such animals fail to exhibit intelligence.

In his paper Into the brains of whales, published this month in Applied Animal Behaviour Science, Simmonds puts forward a compelling argument for the highly developed intelligence of both whales and dolphins. He asserts that, rather than brain anatomy or size, which is sometimes used to indicate cognitive ability, more accurate indicators of intelligence can be found in behaviour and social structures.

[後感]
我要把這篇paper( Mark Peter Simmonds Into the Brains of Whales J. Appl. Anim. Behav.Sci. 100 (2006) 103-116.)找出來…

不過老實說
也有狂熱份子認為愛情鳥這種笨蛋物種
智商和大型鸚鵡一樣高 XD
(不過牠們腦袋鐵定比真菌高明就是了)

Dolphins 『know each other’s names’ – Sunday Times – Times Online: 『
The Sunday Times May 07, 2006
Dolphins 『know each other’s names’
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

Whistles are used for individual recognition
DOLPHINS may be closer to humans than previously realised, with new research showing they communicate by whistling out their own 「names」.

The evidence suggests dolphins share the human ability to recognise themselves and other members of the same species as individuals with separate identities. The research, on wild bottlenose dolphins, will lead to a reassessment of their intelligence and social complexity, raising moral questions over how they should be treated.

The research was carried out by Vincent Janik of the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St Andrews University, who has found bottlenose dolphins to be among the animal world’s quickest learners of new sounds.

He said: 「Each animal develops an individually distinctive signature whistle in the first few months of its life, which appears to be used in individual recognition.」


The research has its origin in the 1960s when dolphin trainers first noticed that captive animals each had their own personal repertoire of whistles.

This prompted speculation that dolphins had their own language and might even have individual 「names」. However, the theory was controversial among whale and dolphin researchers, and until now, there had been no means of testing it.

Janik’s work was based on a group of dolphins living in Sarasota Bay, Florida, who have been studied for more than 30 years. Over that time researchers have built up a detailed picture of individual dolphins, their family ties and their 「social」 interaction.

They have also made extensive recordings of the noises made by individual dolphins and isolated the sounds thought to be their 「signature whistles」 or names.

In the study some of the Sarasota Bay animals were corralled in a net. The researchers then played synthetic versions of the signature whistles of other dolphins through underwater loudspeakers to see if they would evoke a response in the captive animals. The use of synthetic whistles ruled out the possibility that the animals might simply be recognising the sound of each other’s voices.

They found that dolphins responded strongly to the whistles of their relatives and associates while generally ignoring those of dolphins to whom they had no link.

Janik said: 「Bottlenose dolphins are the only animals other than humans to have been shown to transmit identity information independent of the caller’s voice.」

The findings are supported by other authorities. Denise Herzing, research director at the Wild Dolphin Project at Florida Atlantic University, said it was already clear that many of the 77 known cetacean (whale and dolphin) species had rudimentary languages.

「We know that dolphins’ brains are nearly as large and complex, relative to body size, as those of humans. They have evolved to be intelligent and that implies being able to communicate,」 she said.

Dolphins may, however, be just the first of many species where individuals are found to have their own names. Other researchers have already found evidence for highly developed language skills in parrots, crows and primates.

Great apes, such as chimpanzees and orang-utans, have been a popular subject for research because they are so closely related to humans.

Their limited vocal apparatus means they cannot speak but researchers at Georgia State University have taught chimpanzees to communicate in English via computers equipped with customised keyboards and voice synthesizers.

The African grey parrot is another renowned linguist, able not only to learn words but to use them in the right context.

Even some rodent species may have developed a rudimentary language. Con Slobodchikoff of Northern Arizona University recently found that prairie dogs, a large rodent found in the western United States, shared a language of at least 100 words.

Donald Broom, professor of animal welfare at Cambridge University, said species living in large groups all had advanced communication skills. 「They have a complex social structure where they have to live with others, negotiate friendships and find mates. If dolphins are using names I expect we will find the same in other species with similar lifestyles.」』

簡短摘要:
Studies of animal culture have not normally included a consideration of cetaceans. However, with several long-term field studies now maturing, this situation should change. Animal culture is generally studied by either investigating transmission mechanisms experimentally, or observing patterns of behavioural variation in wild populations which cannot be explained by either genetic or environmental factors. Taking this second, ethnographic, approach, there is good evidence for cultural transmission in several cetacean species. However, only the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops spp.) has been shown experimentally to possess sophisticated social learning abilities, including vocal and motor imitation; other species have not been studied. There is observational evidence for imitation and teaching in killer whales. For cetaceans, and other large wide-ranging animals, excessive reliance on experimental data for evidence of culture is not productive, we favour the ethnographic approach. The complex and stable vocal and behavioural cultures of sympatric groups of killer whales (Orcinus orca) appear to have no parallel outside humans and represent an independent evolution of cultural faculties. The wide movements of cetaceans, the greater variability of the marine environment over large temporal scales relative to that on land, and the stable matrilineal social groups of some species are potentially important factors in the evolution of cetacean culture. There have been suggestions of gene-culture coevolution in cetaceans, and culture may be implicated in some unusual behavioural and life-history traits of the whales and dolphins. We hope to stimulate both discussion and research on culture in these animals.

深入摘要:
Studies of animal culture have not normally included a consideration of cetaceans. However, with several long-term field studies now maturing, this situation should change. Animal culture is generally studied by either investigating transmission mechanisms experimentally, or observing patterns of behavioural variation in wild populations which cannot be explained by either genetic or environmental factors. Taking this second, ethnographic, approach, there is good evidence for cultural transmission in several cetacean species. However, only the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops spp.) has been shown experimentally to possess sophisticated social learning abilities, including vocal and motor imitation; other species have not been studied. There is observational evidence for imitation and teaching in killer whales. For cetaceans, and other large wide-ranging animals, excessive reliance on experimental data for evidence of culture is not productive, we favour the ethnographic approach. The complex and stable vocal and behavioural cultures of sympatric groups of killer whales (Orcinus orca) appear to have no parallel outside humans and represent an independent evolution of cultural faculties. The wide movements of cetaceans, the greater variability of the marine environment over large temporal scales relative to that on land, and the stable matrilineal social groups of some species are potentially important factors in the evolution of cetacean culture. There have been suggestions of gene-culture coevolution in cetaceans, and culture may be implicated in some unusual behavioural and life-history traits of the whales and dolphins. We hope to stimulate both discussion and research on culture in these animals.

關鍵字:
Animal culture, cetaceans, cognition, co-evolution, cultural transmission, dolphins, evolution of culture, imitation, teaching, whales

主題:
Psychology: Applied Cognitive Psychology
Biology: Animal Behavior
Biology: Animal Cognition
Biology: Behavioral Biology
Biology: Evolution
Psychology: Social Psychology

BBS線上代碼: bbs00000491
Deposited by: Luke Rendell on 01 May 2001

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