SCIENTIFIC STRAW MEN

Dolphins 'have their own names' (BBC, May 8th, 2006)

Dolphins communicate like humans by calling each other by "name", scientists in Fife have found.

The mammals are able to recognise themselves and other members of the same species as individuals with separate identities, using whistles.

St Andrews University researchers studying in Florida discovered bottlenose dolphins used names rather than sound to identify each other.

The three-year-study was funded by the Royal Society of London.

Dr Vincent Janik, of the Sea Mammal Unit at St Andrews University, said they conducted the research on wild dolphins.

He said: "We captured wild dolphins using nets when they came near the shore.

"Then in the shallow water we recorded their whistles before synthesising them on a computer so that we had a computer voice of a dolphin.

"Then we played it back to the dolphins and we found they responded. This showed us that the dolphins know each other's signature whistle instead of just the voice.

"I think it is a very exciting discovery because it means that these animals have evolved the same abilities as humans.

In his brilliant takedown of Freud, Roger Scruton noted that Freud’s genius lay not in his silly theories but in his capacity to be amazed and astounded by the commonplace and to convince us to be likewise. This is a common feature of modern science, or at least of the public presentation of its work, especially in biology and paleontology. Each and every “discovery” is hailed as exciting beyond words and a challenge to our “old certainties” that force us to “rethink” the natural order. In almost all cases, the reader is invited subtly or not so subtly to conclude that, contrary to what we have all believed since the beginning of time, there is really nothing special about man, who is physically, emotionally, socially and even linguistically of the same order as the animal world.

One of the most famous of such claims was Jane Goodall’s observation in the 1960's of chimps digging termites out of mounds with sticks. According to Peter Watson, the use of tools was “hitherto understood to be the hallmark of humanity” and the discovery reverberated around the world and showed chimps were far closer to us than had been previously believed. But believed by whom? Certainly not by pre-Enlightenment man, whose rich motif of fables and myths included anthropomorphic themes that make Disney look amateurish (Here Be Dragons!) and who experienced near-mystical relationships with horses, dogs, cats and other animals. Shaken scientists may have lain sleepless and wondrous at Goodall’s observation, but it is hard to imagine the man in the street giving more than an impatient shrug and wondering what the fuss was all about. For it was not he who believed in “the old certainty” that only man used tools, but rather the scientists who invented the claim.

Something similar occurs with the much-repeated observation that we share 98.3% of our DNA with chimps, and are therefore almost identical. This figure is drummed into our heads with such frequency that one fears a whole generation is growing up believing it is only their superstition and ethnocentrism that keeps them from inviting chimps to the family reunion or taking them on as spouses or business partners. Outside of strict biological applications, the figure is meaningless (we also apparently share 60% of our DNA with the banana) but it is repeated ad nauseum in the context of a shadowy assumption that before Crick, we all believed humans were made of unique raw materials and that it was these that established us as belonging to a distinct and higher order. In fact, no one ever believed that man’s uniqueness was grounded in the physical, but in persuading us that we once did, modern biology makes its mundane, day-to-day work appear momentous and furthers its campaign to take the uniqueness of the human experience out of science, and therefore out of reality.

Would anyone who grew up around animals be surprised to learn dolphins have distinct whistles that they can recognize? Certainly not anyone who saw that memorable scene from March of the Penguins where mating couples who had just met could find each other in the cacophony of tens of thousands of identical screeching penguins. Certainly not anyone who has observed the complex ways dogs, horses and other animals recognize and communicate. This “discovery” is banal in the extreme, but it does give Dr Janik what every modern biologist dreams of—the chance to stand before a microphone and assert that “animals have evolved the same abilities as humans”.