Commentary on Manger PR (2013): Questioning the interpretations of behavioral observations of cetaceans: is there really support for a special intellectual status for this mammalian order? Neuroscience 250:664–696

• Main Authors: Brain Behav Evol, Onur Güntürkün
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Manger; baleen whales
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.587.8832; http://www.bio.psy.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/papers/Dolphin_cognition _2014.pdf

complex brains, recognize themselves in the mirror, use tools, have ‘names’, display some linguistic competences [Marino, 2004], and have self-awareness [Herman, 2012]. Due to these observations, some sci-entists even demand that dolphins no lon-ger be kept in captivity [Marino and Frohoff, 2011]. These arguments have a po-litical impact and countries like India have decided that ‘cetaceans. should be seen as “nonhuman persons ” and as such should have their own specific rights’. But how strong is the scientific evidence for the cog-nitive exceptionality of dolphins? Manger and colleagues extensively reanalyzed the cortical [Manger, 2006] and hippocampal neuroanatomy of cetecea [Patzke et al., 2013] and came to radically different con-clusions. In the last issue of Neuroscience, Manger [2013] also reviews the dolphin cognition literature and draws a quite so-bering conclusion. But is his critique justi-fied or does he throw the baby out with the bathwater? Before going into the details, a relevant specification of the battlefield seems to be in order. Manger [2013] refers to ‘ceta-ceans ’ in the title of his paper but the vast majority of references of behavioral studies are to bottlenose dolphins. The order of Cetacea contains two suborders: Mysticeti (baleen whales) and Odontoceti (toothed