Beautiful Minds: The Parallel Lives of Great Apes and Dolphins

• Publisher:   Harvard University Press
• Number Of Pages:   368
• Publication Date:   2008-04-30
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   0674027817
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9780674027817

Apes and dolphins: primates and cetaceans. Could any creatures appear to be more different? Yet both are large-brained intelligent mammals with complex communication and social interaction. In the first book to study apes and dolphins side by side, Maddalena Bearzi and Craig B. Stanford, a dolphin biologist and a primatologist who have spent their careers studying these animals in the wild, combine their insights with compelling results. Beautiful Minds explains how and why apes and dolphins are so distantly related yet so cognitively alike and what this teaches us about another large-brained mammal: Homo sapiens.

Noting that apes and dolphins have had no common ancestor in nearly 100 million years, Bearzi and Stanford describe the parallel evolution that gave rise to their intelligence. And they closely observe that intelligence in action, in the territorial grassland and rainforest communities of chimpanzees and other apes, and in groups of dolphins moving freely through open coastal waters. The authors detail their subjects’ ability to develop family bonds, form alliances, and care for their young. They offer an understanding of their culture, politics, social structure, personality, and capacity for emotion. The resulting dual portrait—with striking overlaps in behavior—is key to understanding the nature of “beautiful minds.”

This is a terrific book on a fascinating subject written by a dolphin biologist (Bearzi) and a primatologist (Stanford). Dolphins and the great apes have the biggest brain size after humans, and display remarkable communication skills and social interactions, as well as complex fluid societies. The authors feel that understanding these "beautiful minds" may give us a deeper understanding of the human mind, but I'm content with just trying to get a feeling of how they deal with their environment and families, how they have evolved complex communication, and the various ways their obvious intelligence is manifested. The authors have given an overview of up-to-date research into various topics such as the history of dolphin and ape studies, the structure of their societies, hunting strategies, tool use, learning/remembering/teaching, self-awareness and language, and includes a lot of examples and personal observations. I think this book could easily serve as a starting point to delve deeper into topics of specific interest for the readers.

This is a quick reading, mostly interesting book on the attributes of intelligence possessed by both dolphins and great apes. It falsely claims that elephants are the only other animals with possibly comparable intelligence (other than humans). For example, I would recommend "Mind of the Raven" by the scientist Bernd Heinrich; ravens have all the attributes the authors cite on p.141: "the ability to be flexible, remember, imitate, use tools, understand language and be self aware", to which I would add the ability to deceive. There really is not a sharp divide between intelligent and not intelligent. For example, some monkeys use tools, will deceive, know each member of the troupe, have limited language, but probably could not master grammar. Ironically, "Beautiful Minds" is about cetaceans, not dolphins, since the authors cite whales as frequently as dolphin species. I guess dolphins provide for a catchier subtitle (this theory was actually suggested by some of Bearzi's comments). For readers who want to dig more deeply, I would recommend "Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals" by Franz de Waal, who is the leading authority on chimpanzee mental abilities, and contrasts apes and monkeys.

This book is the collaboration of a dolphin researcher (Bearzi) and an ape researcher (Stanford). It is structured as intertwined narratives about great apes and dolphins, with embedded attempts to draw parallels between ape and dolphin intelligence and social complexity. This approach is immediately complicated by the fact the humans, bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans all have different social structures and reproductive strategies; there are also differences within the dolphin family. (It was not always clear to me whether the focus of the narrative is strictly dolphins or, more broadly, toothed whales. And there are references to the entire whale family.) Longer books have been written just to address differences between the great apes, so this strategy proves very thin in drawing parallels between two diverse families with diverse behaviors. Often, the parallels are drawn between bottlenose dolphins and chimps. But other comparisons are made when they appear to support the thesis of "parallel lives". Individually, the two narratives are well written, engrossing, and serve as good overviews to two fascinating families of highly evolved and generally social mammals. (There are book-length treatments of each family with considerably more detail than provided in this book.) There is some overreach in their arguments about intelligence. For example, a story of a mother dolphin teaching her calf adult dolphin skills is touching, but other, presumably less intelligent mammals, get similar training from their mothers. While succeeding with their argument that both apes and dolphins are among the more intelligent animals, the authors are not as successful in arguing for parallels in behavior, nor for uniqueness of capability. Without the argument of parallel social behavior, it is difficult to argue for similar intelligence (in quantity or form of expression) between apes and dolphins. And uniqueness is brought into question by other animals mentioned and not. The authors mention elephants a couple of times, but only to acknowledge, without examining them, that they also have highly evolved social structures, and may be very intelligent. Looking further afield, the authors briefly mention research into neocortex ratio (the ratio of the volume of the neocortex to the volume of the more primitive parts of the brain) and social group size (and, presumably, intelligence) among primates. This ratio is also large in some monkeys, dolphins, and elephants. (There appears to be an overlap, in brain capacity and behavior, between the "smartest" monkeys and apes.) But some species of bears are reported to have neocortex ratios similar to gorillas. While clearly clever, bears are not notably social (although the same could be said of orangutans). Intelligence is a broad and complex topic, and appears to exceed either the grasp or interest of the authors. Pleas for protecting apes and dolphins and their habitats conclude the book. While supported by the individual narratives, and a sentiment that I agree with, this ending does little to pull together the premise of the book. There may be many animals with "beautiful minds", but the case that great apes and dolphins have "parallel lives" is not proven by this book.

I normally take time to write reviews only on those books that have impressed me and that I hope will gain wide distribution. One of the subjects that I enjoy reading about is the question of animal minds. Donald Griffin wrote a seminal book by that title back in 1992. Frans de Waal published his fascinating book, 'Chimpanzee Politics,' in 1982. There have been many ground-breaking and insightful books on the evidence for animal consciousness and culture. Unfortunately this book is not one of them. Aside from the parallel discussion of chimpanzees and dolphins, there is nothing new here. I have read a good deal of the anecdotal evidence for the consciousness of both species elsewhere. And the chapter on cognition fails to establish any new scientific horizons.
I do feel that I should qualify my comments, however. For someone who is a novice to the question of animal consciousness this book could be a good introduction. It is pleasant to read and examines two interesting species that capture our imagination.

The writing style is a narrative of a person working with dolphins (Bearzi) and separate and distinct narrative of a person working with apes (Stanford). Although the narratives are interleaved, they are jarringly distinct. It is like two people wrote two books, spliced them together where the topics match, then wrote a transition paragraph for each splice. There is little in the way of integration of the two narratives or in the way of new perspective on the relationship of the separately evolved high intelligence in these creatures, whose most recent common ancestor lived about 60 million years ago. The narratives are simple in content, with little to offer to someone who has read about the intelligence of these beings. The good news is, the book is easy to read. The bad news is, it is "an" easy read! Well, easy to read is a good thing, but this one is easy in the sense of not very thought provoking. Aside from the light content, even the amount of prose left me feeling gypped. I'm all for getting to the point, and, had there been more content, the amount of words needed to express it would not matter. The writing on each page is contained within a 3 inches by 5 inches rectangle, with wide spacing between lines. Between chapters is about two pages of white space. The actual "book" ends with page 264. The final "chapter" of 36 pages is really a separate book about the need to be more responsible with out environment. It has little relationship to the minds of dolphins or apes. Then 20 pages of "Suggested Reading" (Amazon does a fine job of suggesting related books) is followed by 6 pages of acknowledgments to brothers, husbands, homemade dinners (I'm not kidding about this!), grantors, the "local populace" and a cast of thousands. It would take less space to list the people on the planet not being acknowledged.

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