SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Orcas Have Big Brains to Go With Their Brawn
from the Chicago Tribune (Registration Required)
Neuroscientist Lori Marino and a team of researchers explored the brain of a dead killer whale with an MRI and found an astounding potential for intelligence.
Killer whales, or orcas, have the second-biggest brains among ocean mammals, weighing as much as 15 pounds. It's not clear whether orcas are as well-endowed with memory cells as humans, but scientists have found they are amazingly well-wired for sensing and analyzing their watery environment.
Scientists are trying to better understand how killer whales learn local dialects, teach one another specialized methods of hunting and pass on behaviors that can persist for generations--longer, possibly, than in any other species except humans.
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