That is what I think!
As a biology student I came across interesting facts concerning the brains of dolphins, which surprised me.
1) Their brains are larger then those of humans, even taking brain to body ratio into calculation.
2) Dolphin brains also have way more astrocytes. Astrocytes determine how much energy will be made available for neurons to use, modulate growth of the brain and development of neurons and have roles in associative and abstract thought. Usually more astrocytes means higher intelligence when it comes to animal species, and Einstein for instance had more astrocytes in his parietal lobes, which are involved in a.e. abstract mathematics.
Dogs have more than rats, apes more than dogs, humans more then apes, and dolphins more than humans.
3) Dolphins have a larger and more convoluted cerebrum than humans. More convulations means more surface area and is a sign of a more complex brain.
Everything points to dolphins having an astounding intelligence. If I had to point to what I thought was the most intelligent species on the planet strictly by looking at the brain, my first guess would not have been humans.
If dolphins had hands and legs, they may very well have been the dominant species. And we would be in their zoos performing tricks for bananas.
I remember also about a case, where dolphins that where trained to do a trick where separated in a basin from other dolphins that hadn't learned the trick yet.
They where visually separated but could still hear eachother. Now, next day the trainers came back to train the other batch and imagine their surprise when they found out that the other group already knew the trick!
Only explanation is that they must have told eachother about what they had to do. It is not too far out, considering that they 'shout' at eachother what to do when hunting.
...and yet the darn things STILL seem to get caught in a stupid net by tuna fishermen. So much for higher intellegence...
It's because they don't have pockets, and so they can't carry money. :-)
At the risk of sounding like a New Age ninny (or worse), these were my first thoughts during the dolphin encounter described in #10, as I was looking these guys straight in the eye from 3.5 feet and being "pinged" and "clicked" by them nonstop:
(1) "These guys are smarter than me," and (2) "I'm in his territory now."