This huge pod of playful spinner dolphins reminded me of an earlier post:
“Dolphins have a massive new brain area, the paralimbic lobe, that we do not possess. The paralimbic lobe is an outgrowth of the cingulate gyrus, which is known to elaborate social communication and social emotions in all other mammals. Thus, dolphins may have social thoughts and feelings that we can only vaguely imagine.” (Mind Wide Open, p.225.)
A research update: “Despite the divergent evolutionary paths of dolphins and primates — and their vastly different brains — both have developed similar high-level cognitive abilities… [and] the capacity for mirror self-recognition, a feat of intelligence previously thought to be reserved only for Homo sapiens and their closest primate cousins” — which is all the more interesting since they can’t see their own reflection under water (leading me to my own crack-pot theory that self-recognition may be a misnomer).
And here is collection of short underwater videos of various subgroups of this pod of about 80 dolphins.
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