Dolphin Dreams
Dolphins, I've just found out, do not sleep at all. This,
supposedly, is why they have such unnecessarily large brains for
what they need to do. Because they never sleep, they also don't
dream and since they don't dream they have to have large brains
since the reason for dreaming - the theory goes - is to clear
the brain of neurological garbage. Dolphins aren't really as
smart as their huge apparently well developed brains and
especially forebrains would indicate. They just have a lot of
brain trash that they don't know what to do with, so it just
sits around there cluttering up their head like that closet you
never got around to organizing.
I'd read a book on early Dolphin research by the scientist John
Lilly who wrote back in about the sixties. I forget all that he
discovered, but I remember the way he started out with his
research was to vivesect five or six of these cute sea mammals
so that he could carefully examine slices of their brains. Also,
in setting up his special research facility he killed a couple
accidentally since he didn't know the proper way to transport
them. He didn't seem too troubled by his casual slaughter of
these adorable animals.
After reading this book, I looked around to find out what other
studies had been done with dolphins and I found virtually
nothing. Well, there had been a lot more dolphin research it
turns out, but the problem was that it was taken over by the US
military and was therefore classified. The Navy soon figured out
that dolphins were very trainable and cheap - they worked for
fishes. Word is that dolphins now patrol underwater at sensitive
government marine facilities. Oh, and of course the Navy figure
out that if you strap a bomb on the back of Flipper they make
really neat guided torpedoes. You'd have to figure that they
wouldn't miss that one.
I'm not sure that I really buy the argument that dolphins have
big brains for no particular reason. After all, sharks don't
sleep do they? And they don't have gigantic craniums. And if
sleeping sharpens the intellect how come cats aren't geniuses?
They sleep all the time. They're smart enough at killing birds
and such, but have you ever seen a cat do calculus? They just
mess it all up.
The fact of the matter is there is not one universally accepted
scientific theory about why animals sleep. That is scary. You
would have thought that would have been one of the first things
they would have nailed down, but for some reason, no. There are
a lot of guesses or scientists who are willing to state their
guesses with the certitude of God himself, but they don't all
agree.
I'd like to believe that Dolphins are as smart as humans and
they use every single one of their brain cells. I've wondered,
though, what on Earth they would do underwater all that time
without any hands. They can't build nuclear bombs or play chess
or anything like that, and if you put an X-Box in front of them
they would absolutely be out in the cold. Pretty much all they
could do is swim around all day and look at fish. I think I
could do that for a day or two and be pretty happy, but after
that, man, it's got to get a little old.
Dolphins communicate with each other, even though I haven't
heard that their system's been entirely figured out. Certainly
no scientist is willing to give them the benefit of believing
they could have an actual language. But, you know what? I will.
Dolphins have a language and it's absolutely beautiful - to
them. They spend all day telling each other stories and most of
all they create the most exquisite poetry the world has ever
known. And the reason they don't sleep is because life to them
is absolutely wonderful and they don't want to miss any of it -
not even to dream.