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griffin tucker

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whales have big brains. could they be trying to tell us something?

another fine example of one of my possibly delusional conceptual ideas put into practice.

whales have huge brains. many times the size of a human's. could they be smarter than us? how could we tell?

if, then, whales were as smart or smarter than humans, could the reason they beach themselves be because of emotional behaviour due to, perhaps, the art/practice of fishing for whales?

Related Talks:
Topics: Fisheries Overfishing whales whaling
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  • Barry Palmer 50+

    • +1
    Aug 16 2012: When I googled "whale language site:.edu" I got 83,300 results.

    There are bunches of people doing research on whale language.

    Could they be trying to tell us something? Of course they could. Probably, "Get your noisy boats away from here."
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    Hong-Min Yoon

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    Aug 15 2012: Just like Zdenek Smith said, I just want to emphasize on the fact that brain size is not necessarily proportional to intelligence. A long time ago, a philosopher (I cannot remember his name) argued that women must have smaller brains than men do based on the fact that women are stupider than men (which is totally false since my sister is far smarter than me).
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    Lejan . 30+

    • +1
    TED Translator
    Aug 15 2012: Excessive use of sonar and other manmade noise pollution is driving the whales out of the water. It hurts and irritates them! So it is simply flight behavior, no silent protest campaign, as they are smart enough not to count on our understanding...
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    Jay Kumar Pradhan

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    Aug 11 2012: Whales are not smarter than us they are wiser than us. They do not kill smarter human beings, The smarter human beings kills them. In many ways they are better than us. They can communicate with each other without the help of letters, telephone, mobile or internet. We should learn from them. We have developed cloning why not create clone of of their body parts individually and mass produce it for consumption. I was thinking that Japan is an intelligent country after seeing them killing whales in the name research as per the different nature channels I have started to rethink about these people. The nature has given everybody the power according to its need. A dog can smell it more than us. If we would have been given that power could we open our nose to smell. Nature has given the Elephant the power to hear sounds from five to six kms. If this power is given to us can we sleep.

  • jesse robb

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    Aug 11 2012: if whales were so intelligent they would be able to outsmart the illegal japanese poachers and Bob Barker's Sea Shepard would not have to work so hard
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      griffin tucker 10+

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      Aug 11 2012: that's what i thought at first.

      then i thought if they were intelligent and were being caught, then they were simply allowing themselves to be caught, perhaps due to a reasoning of expecting the best care from humans.

      when they miss their parents/spouse/offspring, they could become suicidal.

  • Zdenek Smith 100+

    • +2
    HostAssociate
    Aug 10 2012: Brain size does not necessarily correspond to level of intellect and reasoning.

    Human babies have fairly large brains but that brain is still developing and it needs lots of external stimulus and learning to develop to achieve human adult cognitive capabilities.

    But I do hope we will eventually be able to "communicate" with whales at their level or perhaps more. =)
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      Fritzie Reisner 100+

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      Host
      Aug 11 2012: I believe the surface area is much more important than mass, wrinkledness rather than smoothness.
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    Feyisayo Anjorin 50+

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    Aug 10 2012: Whatever they are saying, we ain't getting it.
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      griffin tucker 10+

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      Aug 10 2012: we will one day.

    • Lars Mews

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      Aug 11 2012: Probably because there is not much to get. They communicate via infrasound, what is already known. But whales do not do much over the day, it repeats more or less constantly throughout their lives. You can only build a vocabulary from their actions.

      When you watch two people in a cafe talking about twitter tweets, how would you know that they talk about that? The only words you could "translate" are those used when they actually do something, like ordering a
      new drink and this is getting served.

      As whales talk like people in a cafe, but in lack of waitresses and coffee, you can not understand what this chat is about. And as they are only doing what whales are doing, they could be all large fat swimming einsteins, you will never know from listening.

      Thats why you can be sure of that your dog understands constructs like "going for a walk", because he has seen what you do most times when you say that. Thats why you can tell them to run home, or to person xyz (if they remember this person), but not to find the restaurant with the best lunch deal of today.

      If you waste your life on understanding a whale, you discovered what it feels like to be a dog...
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