Dolphins deserve same rights as humans, say scientists

Recognising the rights of dolphins would end whaling and their captivity

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Dolphins should be treated as non-human "persons", with their rights to life and liberty respected, scientists meeting in Canada have been told.

Experts in philosophy, conservation and animal behaviour want support for a Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans.

They believe dolphins and whales are sufficiently intelligent to justify the same ethical considerations as humans.

Recognising their rights would mean an end to whaling and their captivity, or their use in entertainment.

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“Start Quote

Science has shown that individuality - consciousness, self-awareness - is no longer a unique human property. That poses all kinds of challenges.”

Ethics Professor Tom White Loyola Marymount University of Los Angeles

The move was made at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Vancouver, Canada, the world's biggest science conference.

It is based on years of research that has shown dolphins and whales have large, complex brains and a human-like level of self-awareness.

This has led the experts to conclude that although non-human, dolphins and whales are "people" in a philosophical sense, which has far-reaching implications.

'Self-aware'

Ethics expert Prof Tom White, from Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, author of In Defence of Dolphins: The New Moral Frontier, said dolphins were "non-human persons".

"A person needs to be an individual. If individuals count, then the deliberate killing of individuals of this sort is ethically the equivalent of deliberately killing a human being.

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Intelligent cetacean behaviour

• A member of a group of orcas, or killer whales, in Patagonia had a damaged jaw and could not feed. The elderly whale was fed and kept alive by its companions.
• Dolphins taking part in an experiment had to press one of two levers to distinguish between sounds, some of which were very similar. By pressing a third lever, they were able to tell the researchers they wanted to "pass" on a particular test because it was too hard. "When you place dolphins in a situation like that they respond in exactly the same way humans do," said Dr Lori Marino. "They are accessing their own minds and thinking their own thoughts."
• A number of captive dolphins were rewarded with fish in return for tidying up their tank. One of them ripped up a large paper bag, hid away the pieces, and presented them one at a time to get multiple rewards.
• In Iceland, killer whales and fishermen have been known to work together. The whales show the fishermen where to lay their nets, and in return are allowed to feed on part of the catch. Then they lead the fleet to the next fishing ground.

"We're saying the science has shown that individuality - consciousness, self-awareness - is no longer a unique human property. That poses all kinds of challenges."

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“Start Quote

They can look in a mirror and say, 'Hey, that's me'”

Dr Lori Marino Psychologist

The declaration, originally agreed in May 2010, contains the statements "every individual cetacean has the right to life", "no cetacean should be held in captivity or servitude, be subject to cruel treatment, or be removed from their natural environment", and "no cetacean is the property of any state, corporation, human group or individual".

It adds: "The rights, freedoms and norms set forth in this declaration should be protected under international and domestic law."

Psychologist Dr Lori Marino, from Emory University in Atlanta, told how scientific advances had changed the view of the cetacean brain.

She said: "We went from seeing the dolphin/whale brain as being a giant amorphous blob that doesn't carry a lot of intelligence and complexity to not only being an enormous brain but an enormous brain with an enormous amount of complexity, and a complexity that rivals our own."

Dolphins had a sense of self which could be tested by the way they recognise themselves in mirrors, she added.

"When you get up in the morning and look in the mirror and know that's you, you have a sense of 'you'," said Dr Marino.

"They have a similar sense. They can look in a mirror and say, 'Hey, that's me'."

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Ape versus machine: Do primates enjoy computer games?

By Ella Davies & Anna-Louise Taylor Reporters, BBC Nature

Liz Bonin witnesses Ayumu's incredible skill

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A chimp genius can complete a computer memory test in less time than it takes the average person to blink - and much faster than any human rival. But do the world's cleverest animals enjoy these cognitive tasks?

Ayumu, who was born and raised in Japan's Kyoto University, can remember the location and order of a set of numbers in record time. Sixty milliseconds to be precise.

Of course, it is not "natural" behaviour for a chimp to interact with a computer screen, but scientists suggest this type of task could be good for captive apes.

Ayumu's record stands at 60 milliseconds

"Unfortunately, captive great apes often exhibit behavioural signs of boredom, frustration and stress," says Fay Clark from the Royal Veterinary College's Centre for Animal Welfare.

Working with the Zoological Society of London, Ms Clark has recently published a review of research investigating whether challenges that get captive apes thinking can enhance their well-being.

"If an ape does not receive enough cognitive challenge in life, this can lead to abnormal behaviours or a lack of interest in the environment," she tells BBC Nature.

"The key is for scientists to develop challenges which are relevant, motivating, and ultimately solvable if they are going to be used as enrichment."

Chimp's challenge

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Intelligent animals:

Killer whale: Different pods have developed unique "dialects". A killer whale calf is most likely to learn a dialect from its mother.

Chimp: Wild chimpanzees use at least 66 distinct gestures to communicate with each other.

Octopus: The creatures have been filmed scooping up halved coconut shells and using them as shelters.

Carrion crow: Drop hard nuts on to roads and collect the food after passing cars have cracked them.

Dolphin: Dolphins often make "play" activities more challenging for themselves as time goes on, research suggests.

Otters: Pass down shell-cracking skills to their young. It can take a pup six months to learn how to crack a shell against a stone rested on its belly.

Sumatran orangutan: Observed using objects as tools, including leaves as "toilet paper", large leaves as "umbrellas" and modifying sticks to gather insects.

• Watch the world's smartest animals in action

As one of the world's longest-running laboratory-based studies of chimpanzees, the Ai Project has been investigating chimp intelligence for over 30 years.

Professor Tetsuro Matsuzawa began his research with a one-year-old female chimp Ai, the namesake of the project, in 1977.

Over the years the team investigated Ai's brain power by observing her as she learned to complete tasks including number and object recognition.

In 2000, Ai gave birth to a son, Ayumu, who has since become the number-crunching star of the study, and features in the series Super Smart Animals, for BBC One and the Discovery Channel.

Ayumu's daily routine resembles that of many 11-year-olds: sleep, eat, play and learn.

During his "study sessions" he receives a treat every time he correctly remembers the location of the numbers on screen and selects them in order.

"Ayumu and others can do the task with social praise. Food reward is not the essential matter," Prof Matsuzawa says.

He says the chimps all go to the testing room of their own free will, and "they love to do so".

"It is not only Ayumu but also the other young ones who have the better memory than naive human adults," he says.

Because great apes are "highly individual", it is important to tailor challenges to them, says Ms Clark.

"Some will not be motivated to interact with computer screens," she says. "Some are highly motivated by food rewards; some by human contact."

Ayumu completes his tasks for food but also social praise, says Prof Matsuzawa

At Zoo Atlanta in Georgia, US, a group of orangutans are being closely watched. In 2007, a touch screen cunningly disguised in a tree was installed in their enclosure.

"We have specific programmes to look at how they learn," says Dr Tara Stoinski, who leads the study. "They are not games, [the orangutans] are doing problem-solving."

The apes currently have the opportunity to match symbols to photographs on the screen and their moves are studied by researchers at Emory University.

When they correctly categorise a photograph they are rewarded with a small pellet of food.

"It's not like they're getting jackpot of sweets," says Dr Stoinski, who explains that the orangutans are content to interact with the screen even when the dispenser runs out of pellets.

"For some of them it is inherently rewarding," she tells BBC Nature.

The research team say they have made careful observations to ensure the apes are not negatively influenced by the presence of the "learning tree".

Orangutans at Zoo Atlanta continue problem solving even when food rewards run out

"We were aware that introducing the tasks could cause competition in the group which could have negative effects - it could create some tension.

"So we evaluated it from that standpoint but we didn't find that.

"Our animals they seem to be very happy with the division of labour."

In contrast to the "undercover" enrichment in Atlanta, orangutans in Milwaukee County Zoo, Wisconsin have been presented with the latest in modern technology.

Apes with iPads

Last Christmas, charity Orangutan Outreach began trialling iPad interaction with the apes.

"They've been using the paint application, they love watching videos on them but they haven't really played many complex games," says Richard Zimmerman.

Zoo keepers want to build reinforced tablets so they can leave the orangutans to play without human help

It is early days for the project yet but Mr Zimmerman tells BBC Nature that researchers at Toronto Zoo are now helping to quantify how the apes are interacting with the tablets.

"It's not really toy-like because they are engaging with them as devices... it's definitely going in the cognitive direction."

As a conservation charity, Mr Zimmerman says Orangutan Outreach's key concern is enrichment and helping to raise people's awareness of the animal's plight in the wild.

But by introducing devices to more research-focused centres, including Zoo Atlanta, they hope they will provide more scientific insights.

Orangutans are clearly fascinated by unfamiliar objects but does it matter that these tasks do not mirror natural challenges?

"Tasks do not need to be 'naturalistic', by resembling a tree or a fruit, to be effective," says Ms Clark.

"Research suggests that in terms of animal welfare, it's more important for tasks to be motivating and 'functional' rather than looking natural."

Joystick games

We share 97% of our DNA with orangutans and 99% with chimpanzees so it is perhaps unsurprising that we have common interests.

But it is not just the great apes getting in on the interaction.

Professor John David Smith, from State University of New York at Buffalo and Michael Beran, from Georgia State University have trained macaque monkeys to use a joystick-based computer game.

When uncertain of the correct answer, macaques choose to skip the question and continue the game

To indicate whether the density of a pixel box that appeared at the top of the screen was either sparse or dense the monkeys had to simply move the cursor towards a letter S or a letter D.

"Rhesus monkeys can be trained to use joysticks to complete a variety of computer 'games' or tasks, and the animals readily and freely engage with these tasks for many hours of the day," explains Dr Beran.

"A number of studies suggest that the monkeys come to prefer having the computer apparatus available, to not having it available, even when the alternative is free food."

For Dr Beran, the computer games do not just enrich the lives of the monkeys, they can offer other important insights.

"In our lab perhaps the clearest indicator to us of impending illness or psychological distress in a monkey is a drop in his performance or in his production on his computer games," he explains.

Professor Smith adds: "In a sense, I think, the tasks are their 'Sudoku'.

"I have the impression that our tasks are appropriate and positive aspects of our animals' lives."

As advances in technology improve our lives they are also providing opportunities for us to learn more about our primate cousins, and enrich the experiences of those we study.

Ayumu the chimp features in Super Smart Animals on Wednesday 8 February, 20:00 GMT on BBC One.

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World's smallest frog discovered

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

The tiny frog sits easily on a US dime, whose diameter is 18mm

A frog species that appears to be the world's smallest has been discovered in Papua New Guinea by a US-based team.

At 7mm (0.27 inches) long, Paedophryne amauensis may be the world's smallest vertebrate - the group that includes mammals, fish, birds and amphibians.

The researchers also found a slightly larger relative, Paedophryne swiftorum.

Presenting the new species in PLoS One journal, they suggest the frogs' tiny scale is linked to their habitat, in leaf litter on the forest floor.

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What are amphibians?

• First true amphibians evolved about 250 million years ago
• Three orders: frogs (inc. toads), salamanders (inc. newts) and the limbless caecilians
• Adapted to many aquatic and terrestrial habitats
• Present on every continent except Antarctica
• Many metamorphose from larvae to adults

• Amphibians videos, news and facts: BBC Nature

Finding the frogs was not an easy assignment.

They are well camouflaged among leaves on the forest floor, and have evolved calls resembling those of insects, making them hard to spot.

"The New Guinea forests are incredibly loud at night; and we were trying to record frog calls in the forest, and we were curious as to what these other sounds were," said research leader Chris Austin from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, US.

"So we triangulated to where these calls were coming from, and looked through the leaf litter.

"It was night, these things are incredibly small; so what we did after several frustrating attempts was to grab a whole handful of leaf litter and throw it inside a clear plastic bag.

"When we did so, we saw these incredibly tiny frogs hopping around," he told BBC News.

Littering the leaves

The Paedophryne genus was identified only recently, and consists of a number of tiny species found at various points in the eastern forests of Papua New Guinea.

The tiny limbs of amauensis (top) and swiftorum are rendered translucent

"They're occupying the relatively thick leaf litter of tropical forest in low-lying parts of the island, eating incredibly small insects that typically are much smaller than insects that frogs eat," said Professor Austin.

"And they're probably prey for a large number of relatively small invertebrates that don't usually prey on frogs."

Predators may well include scorpions.

Intriguingly, other places in the world that also feature dense, moist leaf litter tend to possess such small frog species, indicating that amphibians are well placed to occupy this ecological niche.

Before the Paedophrynes were found, the title of "world's smallest frog" was bestowed on the Brazilian gold frog (Brachycephalus didactylus) and its slightly larger Cuban relative, the Monte Iberia Eleuth (Eleutherodactylus iberia). They both measure less than 1cm long.

The smallest vertebrates have until now been fish.

Adult Paedocypris progenetica, which dwells in Indonesian swamps and streams, measure 7.9-10.3 mm long.

Male anglerfish of the species Photocorynus spiniceps are just over 6mm long. But they spend their lives fused to the much larger (50mm long) females, so whether they should count in this contest would be disputed.

Paedophryne amaunensis adults average 7.7mm, which is why its discoverers believe it how holds the crown.

The remote expanses of Papua New Guinea rank alongside those of Madagascar as places where hitherto undiscovered amphibian species are expected to turn up, as they are largely undeveloped and not well explored.

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Leopard in deadly attack in Indian city of Guwahati

By Amitabha Bhattasali BBC News, Calcutta

One of the victims, Kripesh Dey, was badly injured in the attack

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One person has been killed and several others injured in an attack by a leopard in the Indian state of Assam.

The man died after the leopard attacked several people in a densely populated area of the city of Guwahati.

The leopard strayed into the Shilpukhuri area of the city on Saturday and attacked residents, one of whom died the next day of his injuries.

The animal has now been released into the Manas Wildlife Sanctuary, forest officials said.

For the people of Guwahati, bomb blasts and other terror attacks were not uncommon till recently, because of repeated attacks by the secessionist United Liberation Front of Assam (Ulfa), but a leopard straying into a town is rare, particularly during the day.

Chased out

The leopard was first sighted on Saturday morning near a crematorium in the town.

As the funeral of a Congress Party leader's son was going on, the place was full of dignitaries, ministers and other VIPs.

Police sent them to a safer place and chased the leopard out, but it turned towards the Shilpukhuri residential area.

"First, it jumped across several multi-storey buildings, including a bank, then jumped on to the ground," said Manas Paran, photojournalist for the Sunday Indian magazine and an eyewitness.

Local people armed with sticks and iron rods tried to chase the leopard away. The enraged animal then started attacking locals, Mr Paran told BBC.

Mr Paran kept following the big cat at extremely close quarters to get good pictures for his magazine.

Deb Kumar Das, aged around 50, was one of the first people whom the leopard clawed at. He suffered severe wounds to the head, ear and neck.

He was treated in hospital but later returned home, where he was found dead on Sunday.

Several others suffered the ire of the big cat. One of them, Kripesh Dey, had part of his scalp removed in the attack.

Later, when the leopard entered a shop, locals locked it up. Forest officials and vets reached the scene after some time with tranquilisers and were able to capture it.

"After it was tranquilised and treated in Guwahati Zoo, we released it in the Manas Wildlife Sancturary today", said Utpal Borah, head of the zoo.

This incident has once again brought to fore the conflict between humans and animals in India.

Assam's forest officials say humans are encroaching onto leopard habitats. Residential areas built right in leopard habitats have become vulnerable to such attacks.

This is the second death from leopard attacks in five years.

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How do great white sharks benefit the environment

I added an answer that was missing to the Answers.com Database and wanted to catalog it here.

"Since Great White sharks are Apex predators, all they really do is control the populations of animals beneath them.

That control would then lessen the burden on the environment of too many fish taking too much of the oceans resources.

So it helps conserve nutrients and it keeps other animals in check. Besides that though it seems to serve no other purpose as far as I'm aware."

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Killer whales: What to do with captive orcas?

Killer whales: What to do with captive orcas?

Kalina, the first captive born orca, and her calf

By Matt Walker Editor, Earth News

The recent attack by a captive orca on its trainer at a SeaWorld facility in Orlando, Florida, has again raised questions about our relationship with these top marine predators.

No-one knows what triggered the latest incident, and experts agree that it is almost impossible to determine why the orca, called Tilikum, reacted as it did.

But it does highlight the tensions that occur when we choose to interact closely with these huge animals.

It is also debatable what to do with those orcas, also known as killer whales, that remain in captivity.

While we as humans might find it appealing to free a long-term captive animal, the survival and well being of the animal may be severely impacted in doing so Scientists reporting on attempts to return an orca named Keiko, star of the film Free Willy, back to the wild

"They are highly social animals that tend to live in cohesive groups, so it's quite an artificial environment to capture them and put them in a small area," says Dr Andrew Foote, an expert on wild orcas from the University of Aberdeen, UK

"The tragic events are a reminder that orcas are wild, strong and often unpredictable animals," says Danny Groves, of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS).

Wild attacks

Reports differ, but there have been up to 24 attacks by captive orcas on people.

Contrary to popular perception, attacks by wild orcas on people have also been recorded, though no-one has been hurt.

Researcher Chris Pierpoint of the Marine Mammal Observer Association was working in Antarctica when he once subjected to a rather sophisticated, planned attack by a group of orcas.

Wild orcas in the region cooperate to hunt by swimming together towards seals resting on ice floes.

ORCA FACTS There are currently thought to be 42 orcas held in captivity around the world, with at least 10 born there In the wild, orcas join social clubs where different pods interact Earlier this year, it was discovered that two different types of orca are living off the UK

As they do so, they create a bow wave that washes the hapless seal from the ice and into the water.

"Chris Pierpoint had that done to him when in a rib in Antarctica," says Dr Foote, though he wasn't thrown overboard.

"A famous incidence occurred in the 1960s when a surfer was knocked off his board, but he was fine, the whale didn't bite."

A couple of years ago in Alaska, a child swimming in the sea also described how an orca made a bee-line toward him, before aborting a supposed attack at the last minute.

One idea is that air bubbles in neoprene wetsuits can confuse the echolocation of orcas, so they do not realise that they are approaching a person.

But the scarcity of such attacks underlines the difficulty in pinpointing their cause.

"It's really isolated incidences. Killer whales live in cold water so they don't overlap with people much," says Dr Foote.

Send them home?

What the latest attack by a captive orca reveals is just how little we still know about the animals, in captivity and in the wild.

For example, we are only just glimpsing how intelligent orcas really are and the complexity of their society.

However, few insights come from studying captive whales, though some have helped reveal their acoustic behaviour.

"The science doesn't justify the captivity. One thing I would hope is that this unfortunate incident might lead to a considered discussion on phasing out these marine parks."

So what can or should be done with captive orcas?

One option would be to prevent further deaths by restricting trainers from encroaching too close to the poolside.

Another would be to put down any whale considered too dangerous to be kept in captivity.

The final option, and that which on the surface appears the most palatable from an animals rights perspective, is to release those whales still in captivity back into the wild.

The WDCS has repeatedly called for captive whales to be returned, not least because captivity appears to drastically reduce their life expectancy.

But that is not as simple as it sounds.

A study published by US and Danish scientists last year in the journal Marine Mammal Science documents the attempts to return a killer whale named Keiko from captivity back to the ocean.

Captured in 1979 as a near two-year-old calf, Keiko found fame as the star of the 1993 family film Free Willy, after which public pressure grew to release him back to the wild.

Keiko at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport in 1998

Training for his reintroduction began in 1996, and after 2000 his trainers began taking him out into the sea on open ocean swims designed to prepare him for a wild life.

But Keiko rarely interacted with wild orcas, and never integrated into a wild pod.

He also struggled to learn how to hunt, making shallower and less frequent dives than wild whales.

Eventually, and despite the best efforts of his trainers, he could not break his need for human contact, and kept following or returning to the trainers' boat.

Keiko eventually died, still semi-captive in 2003.

"The release of Keiko demonstrated that release of long-term captive animals is especially challenging and while we as humans might find it appealing to free a long-term captive animal, the survival and well being of the animal may be severely impacted in doing so," the report's authors write.

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