(Fourth in a series about beluga whales in captivity.)
Beluga whales are cute, charming, chatty, curious and all-around delightful. And that’s their problem, in that these attributes make them a popular attraction at marine parks and aquariums.
Lori Marino, President of the Whale Sanctuary Project, is a neuroscientist who specializes in the cognitive abilities of whales and dolphins, elephants, primates and other animals. Michael Mountain talked with her about belugas.
Michael Mountain: We’ve heard scientists talking about belugas as the canaries of the cetacean world.
Dr. Lori Marino: They’re always chatting, and they’re always singing. They make beautiful sounds, and they’re very sophisticated when it comes to their communication channels among one another. They have this incredibly sophisticated, sound-producing communication system.
You can compare them to other marine mammals in this video:
MM: What makes them so chatty and chirpy?
LM: Most likely it has something to do with the fact that they have such busy social lives in their large groups. They mainly live in areas where there’s pack ice and where one or more of the group can sometimes get trapped. So, they’d need to be able to communicate with each other about all the features of the ice that they’re dealing with.
The fact is we know very little about their whole communication system, but it seems to be very elaborate.
MM: How smart is a beluga?
LM: Very smart. When I studied the brain of a beluga whale who had died of natural causes, I found that the brain is just as complex as other cetacean brains. They have a highly convoluted neocortex – the part of the brain that’s involved in the brain’s higher cognitive functions. It’s an evolutionarily recent part of the brain. It’s what you see when you look at the outside of the brain – that whole outer wrinkly layer. If you were to unfold it, it would be a long thin sheet. The more folds there are, the more surface area there is for the brain to work with.
One way we measure the intelligence of animals is by the ratio of their brain size to their body size. We call that the EQ or encephalization quotient. The EQ of a beluga is roughly 2.5, which means that their brain is two and a half times as big as is normal for an animal of their body size. It’s about the same as you find with a chimpanzee. Bottlenose dolphins have an EQ above 3 but belugas are quite large, so that doesn’t necessarily reflect how elaborated the brain is. Overall, they just have very large brains for their body size.
MM: What else is distinguishing about them?
LM: As well as being intelligent, they have a very sweet nature. That’s probably because they’re so social and they have to look out for each other. They’re not top predators like orcas. They’re more laid back. They’re very alert and playful, but they’re not as “zippy” as dolphins. Dolphins are kind of over-the-top. Belugas are thoughtful. They have a good attention span and they’re very engaging.
“They’re very alert and playful, but they’re not as “zippy” as dolphins. Dolphins are kind of over-the-top. Belugas are thoughtful.”
MM: All of which makes them prime targets for the captivity industry.
LM: Yes. When they’re in marine parks and aquariums, they come up to the underwater windows and are interested in what’s on the other side of the glass. And their faces are so full of expression that people become mesmerized by them. Belugas can captivate people in a unique way. But this is very unfortunate because it’s how they evolved to be able to communicate with each other in the wild, not with humans when they’re in captivity.
MM: There’s an orphan beluga off the coast of Nova Scotia, whom people called Wilma and who’d learned to mimic the sounds of boat propellers and people calling out her name.
LM: Whales can’t do consonants, but they understand rhythm and emphasis and cadence. So, if I say “Wi-i-lma-a-a” in a sing-song voice, she’s going to come back with “iii-aaa” in a sing-song voice. They’ll mimic every element of the sound except the consonants.
There’s another well-known example from the New York Aquarium on Coney Island. The belugas there were held in a tank that was very close to the elevated subway. And some of them would make the sounds of the elevated train.
MM: Why do they do that?
LM: It’s play, it’s something interesting, it’s part of their way of communicating and engaging with their environment. It’s no different really from what humans do – how we learn language. They’re vocal learners, just like humans. When they’re learning to communicate within their own species, they use mimicry. Dolphins go through a period of babbling, just like human babies, so I wouldn’t be surprised if belugas do that too.
MM: What else do we know about them?
LM: The important thing is that there’s an awful lot we don’t know about them. So, when you take animals we just don’t know and put them in an unnatural setting, that puts them at the mercy of everything we do to them. At least with lions or giraffes, we know quite a lot about them from seeing them in the wild. But with belugas we know practically nothing.
Just for starters, the captivity industry is always trying to breed more belugas for their collections, but it doesn’t have a clue how to keep the babies alive. I saw photos of a baby who’d been born at the Georgia Aquarium, and the staff there had all just jumped in the tank, about a dozen of them. I’m convinced that that was a huge mistake. They wanted to help but it’s all so artificial. The mother was probably freaking out. And the baby died a few days later.
MM: And there was the baby at Marineland who was killed by two adult males.
LM: That’s another case of the people not knowing what they’re doing. I mean you just don’t put two males in with a baby. You don’t do that with any species. Young males are rough, they want to assert themselves, and babies are vulnerable and the mother couldn’t protect her.
In the wild that would never happen. The babies would be embedded in a social network with mothers, aunts, sisters, all watching out for her. But in this situation, you have two males who are already very frustrated because they’re in a tank with lots of pent-up energy, and suddenly they have the ability to take it out on this little baby, and it’s obvious what’s going to happen.
MM: You wouldn’t put a bunch of angry unsocialized boys in a room with an infant human, either.
LM: Exactly. And the same thing would happen with elephants, chimpanzees, so many.
MM: Why would people do something that’s so obviously wrong?
LM: They really don’t know anything about the animals they’re keeping, and they don’t bother to learn anything about them in the wild. And they have this attitude that they’re all interchangeable, and they have no appreciation of their social relationships. It’s a profound lack of interest in who these animals really are and what they need in order to thrive.
Photo in header by Sue Flood – WWF