Horace Dobbs, Follow a Wild Dolphin, London: Souvernir Press, 1977 (quoted in "Whale Nation", Heathcote Williams, Jonathan Cape ltd,1988)
"I WILL NEVER FORGET OUR FIRST KISS"
"In Hawaii's honeymoon paradise, I fell in love with Akeakamai. He was a male
dolphin, and within hours I learned to speak some of his language. He responded
to my simple hand signals and I learned to trust him. Then one morning, he
leaped out of the water and pressed his cold noes against my lips. It was a
moment I'll never forget."
Annick Buiron, 29, quoted in an EARTHWATCH brochure, advertising their educational tours
"Cetaceans seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in sexual activity. This may be generated by boredom in captivity, but observers in the wild tend to confirm it. Dolphins engage in love-play with almost every creature in sight - with mothers, brothers, fathers, daughters, cousins or aunts. There is even one record of a Bottlenose Dolphin masturbating with a herring".
R. Brown, The Lure of the Dolphin, Avon: New York, 1979, quoted in Heathcote Williams, "Whale Nation", Jonathan Cape ltd.,1988.
"The brain size of whales is much larger than that of humans. Their cerebral
cortexes are as convoluted. They are at least as social as humans. Anthropologists
believe that the development of human intelligence has been critically dependent
upon these three factors: brain volume, brain convolutions, and social interactions
among individuals. Here we find a class of animals where the three conditions
leading to human intelligence may be exceeded, and in some cases greatly
exceeded.
The Cetacea hold an important lesson for us. The lesson is not about whales and
dolphins, but about ourselves. There is at least moderately convincing evidence
that there is another class of intelligent beings on Earth beside ourselves. They
have behaved benignly and in many cases affectionately towards us. We have
systematically slaughtered them. Little reverence for life is evident in the whaling
industry - underscoring a deep human failing...In warfare, man against man, it is
common for each side to dehumanize the other so that there will be none of the
natural misgivings that a human being has at slaughtering another..."
Carl Sagan, The Cosmic Connection, New York: Doubleday, 1973 (quoted in "Whale Nation" by Heathcote Williams, Jonathan Cape ltd,1988)
"The species of whale known as the black right whale has four kilos of brains and 1,000 kilos of testicles. If it thinks at all, we know what it is thinking about."
Jon Lien, "Whale Professor" at St. John's University, Newfoundland, speaking to the Norwegian Telegram Agency (spring 1995).
"To think the way we do he (the whale) would need to use about one-sixth of his total brain."
J. Lilly, The Mind of the Dolphin: A Nonhuman Intelligence 63, 1967, quoted in "Whales: Their emerging right to life" by Anthony D'Amato & Sudir K. Chopra, American Journal of International Law, Vol. 85., January 1991
"Dolphin societies are extraordinarily complex, and up to ten generations coexist at one time. If that were the case with man, Leonardo da Vinci, Faraday, and Einstein would still be alive...Could not the dolphin's brain contain an amount of information in volume to the thousands of tons of books in our libraries?"
Senator Hubert Humphrey, quoting the Russian dolphinologist, Yabalkov, at the 1970 U.S. Senate hearings on the Marine Mammal Protection Act (quoted in Heathcote Williams, "Whale Nation", Jonathan Cape ltd,1988)
"When dolphins speak
They use only vowels, and just faint hints of consonants,
But recognisable:
'Hello. How are you.
One-two-three-four-five...six-seven.
Yes.No.
A.E.I.O.U.
My name is Elvar. My name is Peter.
My name is Bobo. Clown.
It is six o'clock.
Trick. Squirt water. Trick. More water...Bye...bye bye.' "
Heathcote Williams, Whale Nation, Jonathan Cape ltd,1988
"How sharper than a sermon's truth it must have been for many human beings when they learned that bottle-nosed Dolphins may, in time, succeed battle-poised Man as the master species on earth. This prophecy is implicit in the findings of those scientists who have been studying, and interviewing, dolphins in laboratories. It neither alarms nor surprises me that Nature, whose patience with our self-destructive species is giving out, may have decided to make us, if not extinct, at least a secondary power among the mammals of this improbable planet... As far back as 1933 I observed a school of dolphins (their schools increase as ours decline) romping, as we carelessly call it, alongside a cruise ship in the South Atlantic, and something told me that here was a creature, all gaiety, charm, and intelligence, that might one day come out of the boundless deep and show us how a world can be run by creatures dedicated not to the destruction of their species but to its preservation."
James Thurber, 'Here Come the Dolphins', in Lanterns and Lances, New York: Harper and Row, 1961. (quoted in "Whale Nation" by Heathcote Williams, Jonathan Cape ltd,1988)
"Every one of these vanished millions of whales used to consume several hundred tons of a large species of zooplankton a year. That plankton now is undergoing a classic population explosion for want of a predator.What will be the effect on the oxygen-producing smaller plankton of the world ocean? What will be the effect on the colour and reflectivity of the oceans? What will be the effect on the average water temperature of the oceans, on its dissolved oxygen content and subsequently on the earth's atmosphere? No one knows. But climatologists know any significant change in ocean temperature can have profound effects on the earth's climates. By killing off the whales of the world man is playing Russian roulette with the earth's primary support system. Yes, we desperately need the whales to preserve the air we breathe."
George Small, Ph.D., College of Staten Island, 'Why Men Needs The Whales', in Project Interspeak, ed. T. Wilkes, San Francisco,1979. (quoted in "Whale Nation" by Heathcote Williams, Jonathan Cape ltd,1988)
"In the water, whales have become the dominant species,
In the water, whales have become the dominant species,
In the water, whales have become the dominant species,
In the water, whales have become the dominant species,
In the water, the whale is the dominant species,
Without killing their own kind.
Though they allow the resources they use to renew themselves.
Though they acknowledge minds other than their own.
Without allowing their population to reach plague proportions.
An extra-terrestrial, who has already landed..."
(Heathcote Williams, Whale Nation, Jonathan Cape ltd,1988)
"Rape, even gang rape, is not unknown among other wild animals. But dolphins have perfected the practice. The team doing the herding is often shadowed at some distance by another. If outsiders try to steal the first team's victim, the back-up group will come to the rescue - not of the female, but of their male friends."
The Economist, the "Science and technology" section, "Sisterhood is powerful", 3rd August 1991. (The author of the article is not given.)
"If a sperm whale, for example, wants to see-hear-feel any past experience, his huge computer (brain) can reprogram it and run it off again. His huge computer gives him a reliving, as if with a three-dimensional sound-color-taste-emotion-re-experiencing motion picture." After thus reviewing the original experience, the whale "can set up the model of the way he would like to run it the next time, reprogram his computer, run it off, and see how well it works."
J.Lilly , The Mind of the Dolphin: A Nonhuman Intelligence, p 63-64, 1967, quoted in "Whales: Their emerging right to life" by Anthony D'Amato & Sudir K. Chopra, American Journal of International Law, Vol. 85., January 1991
Dr. Lilly asks why sperm whales do not attack humans unprovoked. He suggests that they recognize that "we are the most dangerous animal on this planet "and that if attacked unprovoked, "we would...wipe them off the face of the earth. I believe they recognize that we now have the means to do this. A large fraction of our atomic and nuclear weapons testing is done over and in the Pacific Ocean close to the ocean routes of the big whales."
J.Lilly, The Mind of the Dolphin: A Nonhuman Intelligence, p 65, quoted in "Whales: Their emerging right to life" by Anthony D'Amato & Sudir K. Chopra, American Journal of International Law, Vol. 85., January 1991