If you think that because of their well researched communication (people try now to create a dolphin dictionary), their individual and emotional behaviour, their social skills and intelligence, their sense of self awareness, they (all kinds of whales and dolphins) are second most intelligent species on earth, ..-- so can we go on kill them?
How about international laws to forbid this?
Should You agree and want to support, so give a positive vote to:
https://secure.avaaz.org/de/community_petitions/EU-Parlament_Erkennt_Wale_und_Delfine_als_nichtmenschliche_Personen_an_und_stoppt_ihre_Ermordung/details/
Sentience is the ability to perceive the world through neuroelectrical interpretation of one's surroundings as well as to have event induced subjective experiences in the form of tangible emotions; sapience is a measure of intelligence based on the capability to act which in itself is derived from judgement. Cetaceans have long been known to involve in complex social behaviour, communications, emotions and above all possess cognitive abilities which has been proven time and time again.
Looking back at the human made concept of sapience and sentience, YES they are.
But on a side note, the concepts of sapience and sentience are both indoctrinated by humans and the perceptible attributes of these two qualities are equally HUMAN in their definition while in nature the actual sentience/sapience might be something entirely different and the species which appear as not very intelligent to us simply may not need to satisfy the human made attributes in order to maximize its chances of survival in nature and the funny part is we consider all other species beneath us and yet they have all been living much much longer on Earth than we have without creating self detrimental conditions.
Dear Abhishek, i completely agree. So it seems to me a sign of a further reaching development than ours, when these beings with all their abilities do not lead wars and do not chase us, inspite of what we are doing to them. And yes it is a difficult question of definitions. The dictionary of dolphin language they are about to do will lead us a stony way to an unknown destiny, where we for sure still can learn more than we can imagine. Misuding them for marine and military purposes is a shamefull thing, leading back to the darkest colonialism.
I couldn't have agreed more. And most astonishingly we, standing at the height of so called sapience in the 21st century, are still discussing and failing miserably at creating awareness about our neighbors on planet Earth so that they can stay a bit longer for the future generation to appreciate them - while it should not have been an effort, rather an instinct on our part.
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