鲸鱼和海豚有丰富的 类似于 人类 的 文化和社会 关系吗？ 诸平 据英国 曼彻斯特大学 （ University of Manchester ） 2017 年 10 月 16 日 提供的消息，该大学的研究人员与英国 伦敦经济和政治科学学院 （ The London School of Economics and Political Science , LSE ）、 加拿大英属哥伦比亚大 学（ The University of British Columbia, Canada ）、美国哈佛大学 （ Harvard University ） 以及斯坦福大学（ Stanford University ）的研究人员合作结果对此给出了答案，他们发现， 鲸鱼和海豚 ( 也属于 鲸类 ) 生活 在凝聚力 极强 的社会群体 之中 , 它们之间 有复杂的关系 , 可以 相互交谈 , 甚至 可以用 方言 进行交流，这些特征 就像人类社会一样。 此项研究结果已于 2017 年 10 月 16 日（当地时间）在《 自然生态与进化 》（ Nature Ecology Evolution ） 杂志网站发表 —— Kieran C. R. Fox , Michael Muthukrishna , Susanne Shultz . The social and cultural roots of whale and dolphin brains, Nature Ecology Evolution, 2017, Published online: 16 October 2017 . DOI: 10.1038/s41559-017-0336-y 。 更多信息请浏览原文及相关报道。 Whales and dolphins have rich 'human-like' cultures and societies Abstract Encephalization, or brain expansion, underpins humans’ sophisticated social cognition, including language, joint attention, shared goals, teaching, consensus decision-making and empathy. These abilities promote and stabilize cooperative social interactions, and have allowed us to create a ‘cognitive’ or ‘cultural’ niche and colonize almost every terrestrial ecosystem. Cetaceans (whales and dolphins) also have exceptionally large and anatomically sophisticated brains. Here, by evaluating a comprehensive database of brain size, social structures and cultural behaviours across cetacean species, we ask whether cetacean brains are similarly associated with a marine cultural niche. We show that cetacean encephalization is predicted by both social structure and by a quadratic relationship with group size. Moreover, brain size predicts the breadth of social and cultural behaviours, as well as ecological factors (diversity of prey types and to a lesser extent latitudinal range). The apparent coevolution of brains, social structure and behavioural richness of marine mammals provides a unique and striking parallel to the large brains and hyper-sociality of humans and other primates. Our results suggest that cetacean social cognition might similarly have arisen to provide the capacity to learn and use a diverse set of behavioural strategies in response to the challenges of social living.
标签: 鲸鱼
