Dolphins are people too. Cetecean ops as canon!

Awww, but they're so damn cute!

 

I love dolphins!

 

So do I, but I don't buy that they have human-level intelligence. They're very intelligent, yes, but their intelligence isn't the same as ours. It's not just that we don't have a common frame of reference to create a sound language we can both understand; a whale's brain isn't capable of processing anything like what we consider a language. Then again, our brains aren't tuned into whalesong. Whale language is really a misnomer, because it's not a language in any way we understand it, a symbolic form of communication which relies on our brain's ability to think in abstract ways. Whalesong may be a form of communication, but it's no more a language than the chemical signals of insects.

However, like Gillian in Trek 4, my compassion for a species is not limited to an estimate of their intelligence. Let's just say I find Lt. Commander Flipper of the Enterprise a little far-fetched.

 

I don't know. If you can't directly communicate with something how can you accurately measure their intelligence?

I've been studying waterfowl communication and family structure for at least two years now and I have to say that based on my observations I believe most of the data regarding those areas is incorrect. Animals are extremely intelligent but have their own levels of intelligence based on the individual...just like their human counterparts. Nest structures of the Canada Goose, for instance, may all be basic in their construction, but the area that the mother chooses and the materials she uses depends on the her preferences, her judgement and even her personality.

I would loved to have seen cetean ops and do hope that someone uses that idea in a future series.

 

so, these guys got killed when the enterprise-D crashed?

 

Well no more dead than the majority of human crew members I'd suppose...no reason they couldn't use suits and anti-grav, or beam them to another aquatics lab.

 

I first did a painting of a dolphin in a NASA-style pressure suit around 1974 (see Future Life magazine), and then another showing a group of suited dolphins retrieving the Voyager 1 spacecraft, having gone EVA from a mixed dolphin-human crewed far-extrasolar spacecraft.

Since coming on board with TNG in 1987, I had always planned on convincing TPTB to at least mention them.

Rick

 

Possibly not. They had their own escape pods, or the water tanks might have provided a nice g-shock cushion during the slideout.

Rick

 

Nowhere. When CBS shut them down, they didn't even have a game engine, or part of one. Just a lot of really nice concept art that I wish Cryptic had picked up on. A lot of the Ships in STO are fugly. Uber fugly. I especially hate the Sovereign knock off you had to pay extra money to fly.

 

I was thinking that. As long as their habitat wasn't ruptured they'd have been fine. I'd imagine an area of the ship designed to contain that kind of water pressure might actually have to be stronger than most other areas of the ship, so like a bathroom in a tornado maybe it would be one of the safer areas of the ship during a crash.

 

I always supposed that the alien probe itself was created by an alien cetaceans-like species. The probe was vast in scale, the kind of thing a being the size of a whale might create. It's dark, shiny, almost organic-looking skin also reminded me of some pictures I've seen of sperm whales underwater.

For all we know it was crewed by someone and not just an automaton; it being just a probe was just supposition based on the fact that it didn't respond to humans. Doesn't it kind of look like something that could be filled with liquid and contain a large aquatic crew?

 

Wow, I have back issues of Future Life...I'll have to go look. Thanks for the heads up Rick.

RAMA

 

Re: Dolphin Sentience. As my brother has often said, it is going to be incredibly hard to tell, because we see the world so very differently. Human thought is really rooted in the fact that we have thumbs. A Dolphin thinks "I'm hungry. I should go where there is food." while a human thinks "I'm hungry. I should figure out how to make food come here." We are ALL about changing our environment to suit our needs, and will have problems communicating with anyone who is not.
HOWEVER, my brother also likes to talk about the "social contract". It is a simple agreement, founded on this principle: "You don't eat me, I won't eat you." It is the very foundation of society. Some dogs have joined that contract, for example (they have been known to starve when trapped with a human corpse, while other dogs have been known to eat the dead human).
Dolphins joined the contract. Dolphins are perfectly capable of attacking, killing, and eating humans, and they don't. In fact, they have been known to not only rescue shipwrecked sailors and swim them to an island, but to return to the island, entice the sailor to come "play" with them, and then to take him back out to the shipping lanes when another ship is passing. They get that we have a pod to which we belong, and try to get us back to our pod should we become separated.

On Cetacean Ops: the first I heard of it was when I bought Rick Sternbach's blueprints of the Enterprise D. Has rooms and passageways set aside for the dolphins.

 

Well like I said, they may be perfectly suited for their niche, but in terms of outward, evolutionary progression, they will probably never be able to move along with us off the Earth in any co-operative sense without "modification". I do agree we have much more to discover about them.

RAMA

 

I'd rather think of the dolphins from, The Day of the Dolphin.
Scene and start at about 1:30.

I don't know. Water cannot be compressed. And from what I learned about the Indonesian Tsunami, once the 1701C saucer hit the same force that was throwing people and chairs around on the bridge would have been moving the water with the same force.

And please tell me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the water (unlike the bridge crew who stopped once they hit something that, relative to them, was not moving) keep moving back and forth, or around the tank, until it ran out of energy? In theory couldn't that drown the dolphins?

 

If the tank was enclosed so that the water wouldn't all slosh out (allowing for them to surface and breath obviously), water would absolutely soften the blow for them.

Scientists have theorized submerging future astronauts in a liquid that they would be able to breathe in order to cushion them from large accelerations. Suits could be made that would allow aircraft pilots to endure loads far in excess of what they can today.

Forces applied to fluids are distributed evenly throughout the fluid as pressure. Liquids can't really be compressed so their density doesn't change under acceleration. A person who is submerged in a liquid that's the same density as their own tissue can safely endure 2-3 times the acceleration someone in a normal atmosphere can.

 

I hate to revive this but in re-reading it, I noticed how alien people made dolphins seem, and how difficult communication/frame of reference would be. Well carry the analogy over to alien life!!

Since this thread, there have been some advances in communication and with dolphin intelligence assessment.

 

Dude, you could've just started a new thread instead of reviving a four-year-old one. I was reading it and ready to quote someone and make a response.

Then I realized the age of the discussion and that adding anything would be pointless.

 

If that is documented and true it suggests some level of abstract thinking and capability for compassion among dolphins. Like, they understand that humans are living beings who can't survive in the water.

We have this notion of sapience that basically means "As intelligent as us". I don't think dolphins are as intelligent as us but they seem to be more intelligent than any other Earth species. And they exhibit a sense of identity and capability of abstract thinking. But if you draw a line and say "Smarter than this has rights, dumber than this does not", it's very debatable what side of the lines dolphins would fall on and what it would mean.

Personally dolphin, whale and monkey are the only animals I would find it morally wrong to eat.

 

What about apes and people?

Also, your post sort of validates the point I made above.