Q. We know that dolphins are highly trainable. But how smart are they, really?The article reports that Dr. Reiss advised the producers of the 2009 Oscar-winning documentary, The Cove, which I reviewed on June 16, recommending it as:
A. Let me tell you a story. One of the first dolphins I ever worked with was Circe. I’d bring her a fish when I wanted her to do certain things. If she didn’t do them, I did a “time-out” where I turned my back and walked away. Well, there was a certain type of fish that Circe loathed because it had a spiny tail. So I accommodated her by cutting the spines off of the tail. One day, I forgot to do that. Circe spit it out, swam to the other side of the pool and placed herself into a vertical position that mimicked my time-out. I wanted to test this. I gave her untrimmed fish on four different days. Whenever I gave her fish with spiny tails, she gave me a time-out. What that suggested was that she saw time out as a correction and used it back on me. Well, that’s how we learn to communicate.
must-see for its exposure of the atrocity of Japan's annual deliberate slaughter of thousands of dolphins.Dreyfus asks Reiss:
Q. How did you get involved with [The Cove]?Even if the Japanese businessmen are stopped, there's so much else our hearts cry "stop" to, including acts by our own businessmen.
A. I had learned about this fishing village in Japan, Taiji, where dolphins are herded into a small inlet and brutally slaughtered. These animals were being eviscerated and just left there to slowly die, flailing about in the sun. Well, these are the same type of dolphins I work with. I know how sensitive they are, how much pain they can feel, how a mere scratch bothers them.
Few scientists were speaking out about this. So I got biologists and aquarium professionals together and we started Act for Dolphins. We went to the Japanese Embassy in D. C. to bring them scientific information about the animals. Their attitude basically was, “anything we do in our waters is our business.” I also began working with Louie Psihoyos, the film director, and that was the beginning of making the The Cove. It’s been shown in Japan, but that hasn’t stopped the dolphin drive.
Q. How do some of your fellow scientists feel about your activism?
A. It used to be that you weren’t supposed to do both. But when I went to a marine-mammal conference a couple of years ago, I brought a petition against the dolphin roundup in Japan. Three hundred scientists instantly signed.
My feeling is if we can’t stop 34 fishermen from treating these animals so miserably, then what hope is there for fixing anything in this world?
But maybe it's like the starfish that the beachcomber threw back into the ocean. A passer-by said, "What difference does it make? There are so many starfish you can't save from dying in the sun."
The beachcomber replied, "It makes a lot of difference to that one."
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