Part 7

Genus: Monodon monocerus: Narwhal or Sea Unicorn. Arctic seas south of the ice-field. The male is characterized by an immense tusk, sometimes 9 feet long, projecting like a spear from the left side of the bluntly-rounded muzzle. The tusk is spirally grooved, and is the source of the horn of the unicorn of heraldry. Mottled in color, and about 18 feet long.

Genus: Delphinapterus leucas: The White Whale or Beluga. Resembles the Narwhal in size, shape, and habitat, but the tusk is absent.

Family Delphinidae

Genus Globiocephala

G. melas: Pilot Whale or Black-Fish or Ca’ing Whale. Temperate or tropical seas. Rounded head with dorsal fin. Takes its name from the fact that one whale or pilot leads the way of the sometimes huge schools; about 25 feet.

Genus Orcinus

O. orca: Killer Whale or Grampus. All seas. With a high dorsal fin and black and white coloring, aggressively bold and carnivorous, with singular cunning and intelligence. Fourteen seals and thirteen porpoises have been found in the stomach of a male measuring 21 feet. The male is usually about 30 feet in length.

Genus Pseudorca

P. crassidens: The False Killer Whale or Lesser Killer Whale. All seas.

FOOTNOTES

Among the many well-known figures of classical mythology said to have been saved by dolphins from the sea are Eikadios, Enalos, Koiranos, Phalanthos, Taras, etc. In many other cases the corpses were brought ashore by a dolphin, which then expired on reaching land (similarly, with minor variations, was this so with Palaimon or Melikertes, Dionysios and Hermias of Iasos, Hesiod, and the boys already referred to from Baiae and Naupaktos). Similar incidents reappear in the writings of the hagiographers. Saints Martinianos of Kaisareia, Kallistratos of Carthage, Basileios the younger of Constantinople, were each saved from a watery grave by a couple of dolphins. The corpse of Saint Loukianos of Antioch was brought ashore by a large dolphin, which then expired on the sand. See Klement, Arion, 1-64, and Usener, Die Sintfluthsagen, 138-180.

Euhemerus (circa second half of the fourth century B.C.) attempted a rationalistic explanation of the mythology prevailing in his time. The theory he propounded, in his novel of travel, Sacred History, was simply an extension of the current skeptical-scientific attitude to matters which until that time had been accepted without question. That theory was that the gods were merely men who because of their great exploits or beneficence had been accorded divine honors. In Crete, coming upon the remains of a tomb bearing the name of Zeus, Euhemerus argued that even Zeus had probably been no more than a great conqueror, who died and was buried in Crete, and afterwards deified. This creditable anthropological attempt to historicize mythology, though it failed to convince, is nevertheless worthy of great respect. As A. B. Cook wrote, if Euhemerus said that Zeus was a Cretan king when he ought to have said that Cretan kings played the part of Zeus, it is a pardonable error. (Zeus, I, 662.)

“Saved by a Porpoise,” Natural History, LVIII (1949), 385-386.

Winthrop N. Kellogg, Porpoises and Sonar, University of Chicago Press, 1962, p. 14.

George G. Goodwin, “Porpoise—Friend of Man?” Natural History, LVI (1947), 337.

F. Bruce Lamb, “The Fisherman’s Porpoise,” Natural History, LXIII (1954), 231-2.

REFERENCES

Aelian. On the Characteristics of Animals. Bk. VI, 15. Aesop. Fables. “The Monkey and the Dolphin.” Alpers, Antony. Dolphins: the Myth and the Mammal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961. Anderson, John. Anatomical and Zoological Researches: Comprising an Account of the Zoological Results of the Two Expeditions to Western Yunnan. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1878. Apollodorus. The Library. III, 5, 3. Apostolides, Nicholas. La Pêche en Grèce. Athens, 1907. Aristotle. History of Animals. Bk. I, 5; II, 1, 13, 15; III, 1, 7, 20; IV, 8-10; V, 5; VI, 12; VIII, 2, 13; IX, 48. Biedermann, Paul. Der Delphin in der dichtenden und bildenden Phantasie der Griechen und Roemer. Halle, 1881. Cook, Arthur B. Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion. Cambridge, Eng.: The University Press, 1914, vol. 1, p. 662. Douglas, Norman. Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology. London: Chapman and Hall, 1928, p. 161. Euhemerus. Sacred History. Fairholme, J. K. E. “The Blacks of Moreton Bay, and the Porpoises,” Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, XXIV (1856), 353-354. Goodwin, George G. “Porpoise—Friend of Man?” Natural History, LVI (1947), 337. The Greek Anthology. Herodotos. History. Clio I, 23-24. Hill, Ralph N. Window in the Sea. New York: Rinehart, 1956. Kellogg, Winthrop N. Porpoises and Sonar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. Klement, Carl. Arion. Vienna, 1898. Lamb, F. Bruce. “The Fisherman’s Porpoise,” Natural History, LXIII (1954), 231-232. Llano, George A. Airmen Against the Sea. Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama; Arctic, Desert, Tropic Information Center [1955 or 1956], p. 74. Longman, Heber. “New Records of Cetacea,” Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, VIII (1926), 266-278. Longus, Cornificius. De Etymis Deorum. Lucian. Marine Dialogues. 8. Lycophron. Alexandra. Nonnus Panopolitanus. Dionysiaca. VI, 265-266. Norman, John R., and Fraser, F. C. Giant Fishes, Whales, and Dolphins. London: Putnam, 1937. Oppian. Halieutica. I, 649-654, 1089; V, 422, 519f. Ovid. Metamorphoses. III, 1, 202. Pliny the Elder. Natural History. IX, 8, 24-28. Pliny the Younger. Letters. IX, 23. Plutarch. On the Cleverness of Animals. Porphyry. De Abstinentia. III, 16. Rabinovitch, Melitta. Der Delphin in Sage und Mythos der Griechen. Dornach: Hybernia-Verlag, 1947. “Saved by a Porpoise,” Natural History, LVIII (1949), 385-386. Schmidt, Bernhard. Das Volksleben der Neugriechen. Leipzig, 1871. Servius. Commentarii in Vergilii Aeneidos. III, 332. Stebbins, Eunice B. The Dolphin in the Literature and Art of Greece and Rome. Menasha, Wisconsin: Banta Publishing Co., 1929. Usener, Hermann. Die Sintfluthsagen. Bonn: F. Cohen, 1899. Xenophon. Anabasis. V, 4, 28.

Modern Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises, as Challenges to Our Intelligence

By JOHN C. LILLY

The intelligence of whales has been the subject of speculation by writers since Ancient Greece. The discovery of the large brains of the Cetacea in the eighteenth century led to inevitable comparisons of these brains to those of the humans and of the lower primates. The winds of scholarly opinions concerning the whales have anciently blown strongly for high intelligence but during later centuries shifted strongly against high intelligence. At the time of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) the dolphin, for example, was held in high esteem, and many stories of the apparently great abilities of these animals were current. By the time of Plinius Secundus (A.D. 23-79) the beginning of a note of skepticism was introduced. Plinius said, “I should be ashamed to tell the story were it not that it has been written about by ... others.”

In the middle ages the strong influence of religious philosophy on thinking placed Man in a completely separate compartment from all other living creatures, and the accurate anatomy of the whales was neglected. This point is illustrated by Figure 1, published in the 1500’s in Historia Animalium by Konrad Gesner. This was apparently a baleen whale. It has two tubes which apparently symbolize the double blowhole of the Mystacocetae. There is no modern whale known that has such tubes sticking out of the top of his head. There is a huge eye above the angle of the jaw. All whales have the eye at or near the posterior angle of the jaw. The eye is very much smaller than the one shown here. A print published in 1598 of the anatomy of these animals is shown in Figure 2. The drawing of the male organ is accurate (apparently it was measured with a walking stick), but the eye is too large and is misplaced.

These pictures illustrate very well man’s most common relationship to the whale, which has continued to the present day. For commercial reasons man continues to exploit these creatures’ bodies.

It was not until the anatomical work of Vesalius and others that the biological similarities and differences of man and other mammals were pointed out. It was at this time that the investigation of man’s large and complex brain began.

All through these periods intelligence and the biological brain factors seemed to be completely separated in the minds of the scholars. At the times of the Greeks and the Romans there was little, if any, link made between brain and mind. Scholars attributed man’s special achievements to other factors than excellence of brain structure and its use.

After the discovery of man’s complicated and complex brain and the clinical correlation between brain injury and effects on man’s performance, the brain and mental factors began to be related to one another. As descriptions of man’s brain became more and more exact and clinical correlations increased sufficiently in numbers, new investigations on the relationships between brain size and intelligence in Homo sapiens were started. The early work is summarized by Donaldson.

In the late 1700’s and the early 1800’s the expansion of the whaling industry offered many opportunities for examination of these interesting mammals. Figures 3 and 4 are dramatic examples of the state of the industry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

One of the earliest drawings of the complex brain of one of the cetacea is that of Gottfried Reinhold Trediramus in 1818 (Fig. 5). This is an anterior view of the brain of the common porpoise Phocaena phocaena. This is one of the earliest pictures showing the complexity of the fissuration and the large numbers of gyri and sulci.