Cetaceans have disproportionately large and complex brains compared with other animals. The brain of the bottle-nosed dolphin, for instance, is about 10 percent larger than that of a human, and in many ways more complex. For instance, the dolphin neocortex, the part of the brain that performs higher-order thinking functions like problem-solving, is proportionally larger than the human neocortex. To Schnöller, who had spent months in a brain lab while in college, this was no coincidence. It proved to him that dolphins and other cetaceans were very intelligent and capable of sophisticated
...more
