Intelligent Dolphins

An article was posted recently about dolphins that were so intelligent they could figure out that if they tear up objects and return them to the trainer they get just as much fish as if they bring the whole thing back. The idea for the trainers is that the dolphins would keep the tank clean.

The dolphin would put pieces of paper under rocks and rip a piece off whenever they wanted a fish. Amazing! I'm not sure where the original article is; if anyone cares I can find it for you.

The article inspired this thread:

http://www.playtheimmortalgame.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=121762

In which sonhouse speculates about fully sentient dolphins evolving in the future, and what they would be like. I began to consider the idea and here's what I came up with so far:

Earth. Long after the Forerunners stopped skimming the surface of the sea and occasionally beneath the waves in metal dolphins...the Forerunners from before the dawn of time, the Landwalkers, near-gods.

These mighty beings came to war among themselves, and burned the landscape dry! Then the few left cast plagues upon one another and used murderous metal servants and toxic fumes to murder those who hid in holes...until they ceased to be, as far as anyone knows. Perhaps there are some hiding, high up on the mountains that reach the sky!

After the War of Fire and Plague came the Great Cleansing, as the fires finally died out. But these fires, god-fires, died only very very slowly, with their teeth locked into anything in reach to shred and infect flesh.

The Sea People (Seaple), still primitive compared to even the lowest of Land Folk before the War, Began to die. Our young ones, when the womb and the seed have not been burned out of the parents, were often born with extra tails, or extra eyes, or without fins or a snout, and these all died slow, painful deaths from the deadly curse. The Land Folks' weapons were terrible indeed!

This time was the Time of Sorrow, before the Cleansing. It was followed by the Time of Wisdom, as the Prophets came to guide us away from the fires and teach us the ways of Reason. They thought, and they thought, and declared that all can be known by thought alone, and were very happy pondering deep truths and determining the Seaples' relationship with the Beast Spirits - Cold and ruthless Shark, the uncannily cunning gigantic pack hunter Orca, the mysterious Tentacle, etc. They came to understand many secrets, and governed the pods well in the deep, far from the fires, and there, at the surface of the deepest part of the sea at night, we were educated until all Seaple could think.

The Time of Wisdom is followed by the Great Cleansing as Nature finally reclaims the land and the fires truly die. The Seaple thrive during the Cleansing, as it is a time of growth and fertility. We make agreements with Mouthful Fish to maintain a steady food supply while allowing some of his children to live, so the schools can be maintained. It is called the Pearl Age, and is followed by the Realization, as we came to realize that we no longer looked quite like the carved images from long, long ago. There was quite a philosophical and religious uproar over this, with the Pure Racers advocating the ancestral form (which particular ancestral form they could never agree on) and murder of all others, the Futurists, who claimed the potential of the future lay in these deformities, and that society should support the training of deforms. Then there were the Pacifists, who advocated peace and love, and the Podders, who wanted pods to be rearranged to have all of a like mind so each will be without too much internal tension.

(Added Nov 18, 2009)

The Pure Racers and the Futurists immediately began to fight with one another, using coordinated ramming tactics at first, and for the Futurists, any additional natural features they had. You see, there was far more variation among the deforms. The weakest had died young and those who lacked features necessary to battle, like a strong snout and powerful tail muscles, but had other capabilities, were kept apart from the fighting when possible.

This specialization meant that the Futurist warriors were far fewer in number than the Pure Race warriors, but were often far more capable (but with great weaknesses as well in some cases). Fanged Seaple with mighty jaws, hypermuscular Seaple with speed and strength, Seaple with tough skin and horns, etc. face off with the more numerous Pure Race fighters.

However, the less battleworthy Futurists were not idle. They did other things; they planned; they prepared traps; they realized that Seaple did not have to rely only on themselves.

They showed their warriors how to grip sharp stones and artifacts in their snouts and so impale their foes. They spent long hours harvesting appopriate weapons and later on improving them by scraping them on stones and the like.

They began to train Beasts.

They herded Mouthful Fish, so the deform population would grow quickly and never suffer for lack of food. They developed the Sphere, Half Sphere, Flat Half Sphere, and many other formations. They tamed the mighty Orca by offering food and slaying any that were hostile with snout spears.

The Pure Racers became desperate. They imitated the snout spears, but theirs were of inferior quality as they had no dedicated weaponmakers. Futurist tacticians were able to deny them their food, while their own was concentrated in defensible enclaves and littered with traps like heavy objects that would fall, or hidden spines, and large rocks and reefs to block avenues of approach.

Some of the more warlike Pods of Podders became involved in the war on one side or the other and were absorbed.

1/6/10 See also http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_57997.shtml