Family Vocation
Increasingly, Canadian households are eschewing corporate charities in favour of launching their own grassroots organizations. Inside the complex world of doing good, family-style.
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
One of the larger females has begun to “spy hop”—rising up vertically out of the water like a thick periscope, exposing her eyes to the surface. I have the sense that I’m being stared at by another form of intelligence. It’s both thrilling and a little disconcerting, as though I’m being asked to partake in an exchange I haven’t really prepared for.
Some of the critics of the declaration certainly feel this way. National Post columnist and policy analyst Tasha Kheiriddin was quick to point out that in order for an animal to have rights, it must be part of a social contract, something impossible between animals and humans. “An animal owns no property. It cannot be taxed. It bears no responsibility, legal or otherwise for its actions: You cannot sue a dolphin if it bites you or wrecks your boat.”
Marino says there are other ways to look at it. “We don’t expect human infants to have responsibilities,” she says, “yet we still consider them people.” Ultimately, Marino argues, the declaration becomes pretty hard to dismiss if you stick with basic rights. “We are not saying that dolphins should vote or go to school—obviously this is preposterous. What we are saying is that the rights of a species should be based on their critical needs. In the case of whales, they should have the right not to be killed and tortured and confined, the right to live free in their natural environment. This is very basic stuff.”
Marino’s vision for a Cetacean Nation is, at first blush, that of a conservationist. But as I watch the whales I realize there’s also something new in the works here, something that has to do with our own minds, not just whale minds. We’ve always looked to the stars for signs of intelligent life. Now we’re waking up to the idea that such life exists right here. But the facts as we currently understand them—for 35 million years whales have had the largest brains and the most complex cultures on the planet—can’t really tell us what kind of mind we are dealing with. Where, for example, so many of our resources are directed towards manipulating objects and ideas, whales’ emotional and cognitive resources seem to be directed socially, at one another. They have no hands to manipulate the world. But they have brains to feel it, in a way we do not and cannot fully understand.
And yet, for all the exotic otherness of the whale mind, it’s equally true that there are elements that we can know and understand. As any pet owner will attest, we can often tell when an animal is angry or loving or even calculating, because we share those qualities. I can relate to the sperm whales’ need for physical intimacy, to their loyalty to one another, to their curiosity. And these are just the visible behaviours. The science suggests other shared qualities: a capacity for culture, communication and creative problem solving. What you begin to realize about animal minds is that, when we compare ours to theirs, there’s always something distinct and something shared; this ratio simply shifts in relation to the species in question.
So the common core we share with a bacterium is far narrower than that we share with a whale, which in turn is perhaps narrower than that we share with our close cousin the chimp. In a sense the human-to-animal mind question may simply be an exaggerated version of the human-to-human mind question: We can never entirely know another person’s experience—all the more so if that person was raised in a different culture—but there are vast areas of overlap that can, with science and empathy and imagination, be expanded.
What is a person? A being, certainly. But personhood is also a quality that emerges from how we relate to one another. When we deem another entity a “person” we recognize that there’s another point of view present, one with its own internal coherence and integrity. Whatever happens on the legal front in the years to come, the question of animal personhood is foremost a personal one. It will be answered differently by each of us. The true promise of the Cetacean Nation will only be realized to the extent that we, as a species, can recognize we’re surrounded by a rainbow of exotic cultures and narratives. We’re invited to be participating members in the community of nature, connected as though by invisible lines of echolocation to all these other “persons” on our planetary home.
As for the sperm whales, it’s enough, for now, just to watch them. Gradually, they stop playing and begin to drift away from the boat. Then, as if cued by some invisible signal, they roll their broad backs and salute the air with their chiselled flukes. Six clear watermarks float in their wake.
Sponsored Links
Looking for more great advice? Sign up to our newsletter for more useful tips, delivered straight to your inbox.
Recent Features
-
-
Reader's Digest Names Canada's Most Interesting Towns
The wait is over, and we’re pleased to announce the winners of Canada’s Most Interesting Towns contest.
-
Justin: The Second Coming of Trudeau
He’s the son of a political giant and the new hope for the beleaguered Liberal party. But who is Justin Trudeau?
-
Video: Justin Trudeau boxing Reader's Digest Canada journalist Philip Preville
While shadowing Liberal Party leadership contender Justin Trudeau for our April cover story, Philip Preville went toe-to-toe with him in the ring.
-
Cops and Hackers
Cybervigilantes and hackers argue that 21st-century crimes are happening in a universe where traditional law-enforcement methods are obsolete. How the digital age is forcing police to step up their game.
-
Rise of the Robots: Machines Custom-Made to Care for You
The next generation of robots is poised to acquire the very thing that makes us human: our empathy.
-
The $273 Billion Question: Enbridge and the Northern Gateway Controversy
The Harper government wants to supercharge the Canadian economy by allowing over 200 tankers a year through the waters off British Columbia. Detractors of the so-called Northern Gateway insist a single oil spill is all it would take to destroy one of the world’s most diverse natural environments. Is the payoff worth the risk?
-
The Blissologist: A Yoga Guru's Revolutionary Approach to Wellness
Yoga star Eoin Finn believes he’s found a way to be the happiest, fittest Canadian. Now he wants to convince the rest of us.
-
Life Twice Given: An Unlikely Sacrifice
At 16 weeks, Logan Hampson fell mysteriously ill. Four years later, his baby sister, Alyson, developed the same symptoms. Discover the true story of what a mother and father sacrificed for their children.
-
Staying Alive: The Breakthrough that Lets Vegetative Patients Communicate With Us
As doctors fight for the final say, the latest neuroscience is redrawing the boundaries of life and death while revealing a scary truth—that maybe we shouldn't be so quick to pull the plug.
-
Resurrection: The Catholic Church's New Era of Openness
After decades of child abuse scandals, a new generation of Catholic leaders has vowed to turn things around. Meet the new church of zero tolerance.
-
Clean Freak: Is our Fear of Bacteria Making us Sick?
We disinfect, we sterilize, we pasteurize. We've made bacteria Enemy No. 1, but playing it safe might be what's making us sick.
-
The Sick Reality of Canadian Health Care
What does it take to get a clean bill of health in our two-tiered health-care system? Luc Bouchard found out first-hand why being a "patient" patient could be a life-threatening decision.
-
True Stories: Saved by the Belle
When a college student smashed his head on a mountain rock in the middle of the wilderness, his chances of surviving were low. To save him, his girlfriend did the impossible.
-
Justice Delayed: The Exoneration of Joseph Salvati
Falsely implicated in a 1965 murder, Joseph Salvati spent 30 years in prison after being sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. He was innocent - and the FBI knew it all along.
Magazine
Special Features
Contribute to Reader's Digest
Advertisement
Shopping Spree
With Our Partners
Contests
"Spring Into Health" contest
Enter the "Spring Into Health" contest for a chance to win 1 of 3 prizes!
Lakota Natural Getaway Contest
Enter for a chance to win a 4-night stay for two at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler
Special Moments Photo Contest
Enter for a chance to win a Hallmark prize pack worth $500, and be featured in a future issue of Our Canada magazine!
Most Popular Stories
- Rated
- Emailed
- Commented
Advertisement
Post a comment
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