Family Vocation
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Why Whales Are People Too
The science proves it, but are humans ready to see them as equals? Get ready for a new world order.
Photo: Jonathan Bird/Getty
Whitehead calls such socializing the “bonding glue” for sperm-whale society. But we’re also being shown a window into his most astonishing proposition: Sperm whales have distinct cultures. Each clan, he argues, is unique in almost every way: feeding, migration patterns, child-care preferences, rates of reproduction. Sperm whales also speak different dialects. In addition to their echolocation clicks, they produce unique sequences of clicks called “codas,” which change from clan to clan—think of the variations, say, between Sicilian and Venetian—and are likely a declaration of group identity.
“These aren’t genetic differences,” says Whitehead. “They’re learned.” What distinguishes whales—along with chimps, elephants and perhaps some birds—is the fact that the things they learn persist through time. They seem to be passed down from generation to generation until they form part of the distinct identity of the clan.
Whitehead’s evidence adds a whole new dimension to the way we think about protecting whales. It tells us that if humans break up a group of sperm whales or killer whales or dolphins, we are destroying not just individual lives or a population of animals; we are also destroying a unique dialect, a hunting strategy, a social tradition—an ancient, living culture. “You have to understand,” Whitehead says, “until a few hundred thousand years ago most of the culture was in the ocean. Certainly the most sophisticated cultures on Earth were whales and dolphins, until the strange bipedal hominid evolved.”
When Whitehead and his colleague Luke Rendall published their findings in a 2001 special issue of the influential journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, a few scientific commentators were critical, calling the claims of culture “weak” and “overblown.” Others found the evidence convincing, piecing it together with new research into cetacean cognition that continued through the decade.
It all came to a head this past February in Vancouver, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science—the world’s largest gathering of scientists—when a small group of scientists and ethicists presented what they hoped would be a paradigm-changing proposal to a packed room: “The Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans.”
“We affirm,” reads the declaration, “that all cetaceans as persons have the right to life, liberty and well-being.” They have the right, the declaration continues, not to be slaughtered, not to be held in captivity, not to be owned or exploited or removed from their environment. The declaration sparked national and international coverage, most of it positive, some critical and some quizzical. “The important thing,” says one of the authors, Atlanta-based Emory University neurobiologist Lori Marino, “is that people are taking it seriously.”
The declaration is, of course, nonbinding, so the real test will be whether the group can get the project endorsed legally. They hope to bring the declaration before the UN. As part of another effort, Marino and some of the signatories are also working with an organization called the Nonhuman Rights Project, which is preparing to litigate its first cases and break through the legal wall that currently separates humans from nonhumans. “We want to argue for whale common-law status—to actually use a dolphin or whale as a plaintiff,” says Marino. “We think we can find a jurisdiction where a judge would be open to hearing this. The science is on our side.”
The key claim is that whales and dolphins are entitled to that privileged human status known as personhood. “Humans are considered persons because they have a certain set of characteristics,” says Marino. “They are self-aware, intelligent, complex, autonomous, cultured and so on. If we accept that definition—and versions of this are used around the world in constitutions and other legislation—then the latest science is telling us that cetaceans also qualify. They are, therefore, nonhuman persons.”
Whales, it seems, are having their civil-rights moment. But is the science behind the declaration’s claims sound? And if so, what are the legal and ethical implications of extending personhood to cetaceans? What would a Cetacean Nation even look like?
Next: "The extraterrestrials are here - in the sea."
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9 comments
The article mentions that while whales have no hands to manipulate their environment, they have brains to feel it. It also mentions their emotional area of the brain includes an additional lobe. Could perhaps the fact that they must accept their environment as-is be a cause to their deeper emotional understanding and feelings as they cannot change their physical world. ?
Get ready for a new world order? Is this some conspiracy? Is this the Illuminati? Is this what the high ones have been trying to hide. You have vaguely mentioned it. I applaud that jest. Let the world know what is really going on so we can stop it.
Fascinating article! The most fascinating parts to me are the differences/contrasts between the whale view of their world/community and our view of our world/community. They can "see" into each other, we have to ask/tell in words. Our cliche "walk a mile in my shoes", relies on our individual empathy, imagination, intelligence to be able to do so, they can actually do it by sensing the return echoes of their community members' clicks, calls, and whistles.
What a wonderfully written article. Very informative, engaging, and enlightening. A must read.
At last an article that removes the idea that whales are "persons" from the fringe borders of science. Thank you for an excellent article. I was both happy and excited as I read it, but also sad because of the cruelty these sentient creatures have endured at the hands of Humans. Perhaps now the world will recognize why heros like Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society will fight for the lives of Whales until he can fight no longer. What a shame that one of the most vocal protectors of these magnificent, intelligent sentient biengs is now bieng persecuted by the whale killers themselves. And the rest of the world is pretty much indefferent. How very sad.
It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed—while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou has seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!” “Sail ho!” cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head. “Aye? Well, now, that’s cheering,” cried Ahab, suddenly erecting himself, while whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow. “That lively cry upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better man.—Where away?” “Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her breeze to us! “Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would come along that way, and to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies; not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.” - Moby Dick by Herman Melville
and why some people are whales too... too much fish and chips I believe and less exercise. Tweeeee....Ooooo... aaaaaAAAAsqueeee (thats just the bed creaking as they roll over.
Agree with your every word, Claudia.
nice one. <3