Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
From the brains behind Brains On, this is Moment of Um. Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Captain Smarty Pants. Why, good day to you, my fellow smarties. I'm pleased as punch to be pontificating on this prodigiously popular podcast. I spend at least 38.6 minutes each day celebrating my enormous human brain.
That's after I've done an ultra-difficult crossword puzzle, three brain teasers, and two thought experiments. Gotta keep the old thinker machine in tippy-top condition. We humans have incredible intelligence thanks to that elegant electric meatball, our beautiful brain, that sits between our ears. But I've heard that we humans aren't the only creatures with mega minds. Apparently, dolphins have big brains too! Fascinating!
Maya was curious about this too. What makes dolphins so smart? Let's broaden our brains with an answer from an expert. Dolphins are so smart because they have these big, well-developed brains like humans do.
Hi, my name is Vicki Stein. I am a science writer. They probably evolved to have these big brains because they're very like us in a lot of other ways too. Most importantly, they are hunters, so they use a lot of very complicated strategies to find and catch and outsmart their food. And then also they're very social.
So social interactions like humans have and like dolphins have, that takes a lot of brain power. They can make a hunter much, much more successful because social animals are able to communicate and work in teams and catch food that solo hunters could never pin down. So you can think about, you know, lions working together to take down a water buffalo or an elephant or wolves working together to catch a moose. Dolphins are doing a similar thing from time to time, depending on the species of dolphin.
So over evolutionary time, dolphin ancestors that were smarter and bigger brained tended to be more successful and they had lots of babies who were also smarter and bigger brained. So all of that evolutionary time of it being more advantageous to be more clever, more social, more interactive,
all of that time kind of added up to the dolphins that we have today that tend to be really big brains, potentially complicated in terms of their language. We're still trying to work some of that out and understand all of the things that they say to each other and all of those many hunting strategies that they have. It's something that they had to actually figure out at some point. Some very clever dolphin figured this out and then she taught her babies to do it and they taught other dolphins to do it. And so now it's this well-known behavior.
Well, butter my cerebellum and call my brain a biscuit. That's incredible! Dolphins thrive in close family groups, just like humans. It helps them hunt prey they could never catch by themselves. It also means that they use their big brains for lots of communication in their groups, just like we do. Delightful! Oh, I'm afraid I've got to dash. I'm late for my afternoon's Rubik's Cube session.
If you like this episode, take a second to subscribe to Moment of Vom wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want a voyage from the seas to the skies, check out the Brains On podcast where we have a whole episode all about auroras, nature's nighttime light show. Want to see our shows come to life? Head to YouTube where we've got awesome animated Brains On episodes. Search Brains On Universe on YouTube and subscribe.
If you have a question, we'd love to help you answer it. Drop us a line by going to brainson.org/contact
Moment of Um is produced by Molly Bloom, Rachel Brees, Rosie DuPont, Anna Goldfield, Rupi Guthrie, Mark Sanchez, Anna Weigel, Nico Gonzalez-Whistler, and Aron Moldeslassie. We had editing help from Shayla Farzan and Sandin Totten, and engineering help from Alex Simpson. Our theme song is by Mark Sanchez. Our executive producer is Beth Perlman. The executives in charge of APM Studios are Chandra Kavati and Joanne Griffith.
Special thanks this week go to Wendy Hunter, Laura Kojima, and Vicki Stein. See you next time, and the next day, and every weekday. Until then, um... Aha! Done! Only took me six minutes this time. Personal best.
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