(Ninth in the series Superpod One – Where It All Began)
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Brainiest of Them All?
Scientists have several ways of measuring the size and complexity of the brains of different animals. Whatever way you look at orca brains, you have to conclude that these guys are super-intelligent.
After dinner, Lori Marino gives us a general intro to the brains and intelligence of orcas. Lori is a neuroscientist and Professor of Psychology at Emory University, and the founder of The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy.
Pound for pound, she tells us, the orca brain greatly outsizes the human brain. It’s the fourth largest brain of all, while humans come in 23rd. Where humans score highest is in the ratio of brain size to body size, as you see on this chart:
Another way of measuring braininess is surface area, which is very important. We humans have to pack a lot of brain into a space that can’t grow any bigger (otherwise we’d get stuck while trying to be born). So, the way we’ve expand our brains is by having more surface area – i.e. more folds and wrinkles.
Relative size difference of post-mortem killer whale brain and human brain.
Orcas have done the same thing, as you can see from the photos. They seem to be packing even more brain surface than humans into the available space in their heads.
Lori explains how their brains are organized quite differently from ours. Audio and visual areas are closer together than in our case, and this makes for faster and more complex processing power.
So, who’s the brainiest of them all? We don’t know for sure, but a case could be made for saying that many dolphin species (of which orcas are one) outdo humans in terms of the processing power of their brains.
Lori is co-author of the famous Mirror Self-Recognition Study, that showed how dolphins are one of the few species who can recognize themselves in a mirror. That’s one of ways that shows an animal as having a sense of self, meaning that they know who they are and can think about themselves objectively. It was as a result of doing this study that she concluded that keeping dolphins in captivity is completely wrong, and she has been speaking out against it ever since.
You can read about the study here, and check out an interview with Lori here.