Dolphins as persons | Dee Eggers | TEDxAsheville

UNC-Asheville professor Dee Eggers discusses dolphins as persons and ideas for protecting them and other species that face extinction.

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A student walked into my office one day

and said he'd like to talk to me
about an undergraduate research project

and I said, "Sure,
what are you thinking about?"

And he said, "Well, there's been so much
research done on bottlenose dolphins

that we now know they meet
the universal definition of persons."

And I said, "Keep talking."

And I didn't even realize
until that moment,

that I had never thought of persons
as anything but humans,

just like, you know, interchangeably.

The implications though,
if dolphins are persons,

is that they have moral standing,
and what that means,

from an environmental policy
and management perspective,

is that we wouldn't be managing
populations of dolphins,

they would actually,
individually have rights.

In that project we looked at which rights,
in the Bill of Rights,

and in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights,

would be extended to dolphins.

Or we would actually, really, recognize
that they already have those rights.

And I'm not going to talk
about that project tonight specifically.

What is a person now?

Philosophers have
lots of ideas about this,

there's rough consensus, discussed
by Thomas White in his book,

'In Defense of Dolphins',

around eight criteria.

A person is alive, aware,

feels positive and negative sensations,
and has emotions.

A person also has a sense of self,
controls its own behavior,

recognizes other persons
and treats them appropriately,

and has a variety of sophisticated
cognitive abilities:

problem-solving, abstract thought, etc.

I'm not going to make the case
that dolphins are persons tonight.

I'm just going to tell you some stories.

Also because
many definitions of personhood

have a big weakness, that has to do
with verbal communication,

which I think is kind of funny,

because the language spoken
by more organisms

than any other language on Earth,

is actually bioluminescence.

So our use of language
and communication are pretty limited.

Several years ago there was a man,
he was at an aquarium,

and he was looking through the window

at this baby dolphin
on the other side of the glass.

And he was smoking a cigarette,

because it was several years ago.

He took a drag off his cigarette,
and he blew it toward the baby dolphin,

and it spread out on the glass.

And the baby dolphin
swam away to its mother,

and got a mouthful milk,
and swam back and faced him,

and squirted the milk out,
yeah, yeah.

Where is that in the list?

So, abstract thought,
material substitution ability?

Pretty impressive.

Another story,

there's a diver, who's diving
down at about 60 feet.

He was on the bottom doing something,

and three dolphins swam up to him:

two adults and a baby in between them.

And they swam right up to him

and the adults held the baby down
on the bottom in front of him.

And the baby dolphin had a hook
in front of its tail, and the fishing line

was wrapped around its fin
and was cutting into it.

So they held this dolphin down
in front of this human.

And the guy took out his knife
and he cut the lines

and unwrapped the fishing line.

And he tried to pull the hook out

but it was too embedded
for him to pull out,

and the dolphins were still
holding that thing.

And so he cut it out
with his knife,

which, without question,
was quite painful for the baby dolphin.

But he got it all cleaned up.

So one adult and the baby swam off,

and the other adult
swam right up to his mask,

and put his snout
right into his face,

which is normally aggression,

but he said it was clearly
not an aggressive move at all.

And that dolphin --

they just they just looked
into each other's eyes

for a long time, and then
the dolphin swam away.

Dolphins see with their eyes,

but they really experience the world
through sonar.

So if a dolphin
is in front of us underwater,

it would be able to see and tell
all the differences in density,

so it would be able to see
all of our organs, individually.

They can tell differences in thickness
down to a millimeter,

or probably less.

That's as far as we can figure out
what they can tell.

It would see our blood flowing,

it would see all kinds of activity.

Dolphins can tell
when humans are pregnant,

because it's like, "Yep, that's in there.

I know what that's about, you know."

There's actually a case where a dolphin
indicated a woman was pregnant

before she knew she was pregnant.

But they see with sonar,
which raises lots of questions.

And I'm sure that dolphin was doing
all kinds of sonar stuff with the human

but we don't have
sensory equipment for that.

Can they lie?

When humans lie, our palms sweat,
our heart rate changes, and things.

Dolphins could see all of that happening,

and they can see it happening
in each other.

So unless they could lie
with no physiological change,

it might be that they can't,
or don't lie.

Or maybe they do,
but it's interesting to think

what would a society be like,

if lying weren't possible,
and had never been possible?

Wow!

I don't think we'd actually have
the climate crisis,

and a lot of other things.

A woman researcher,

she swam with dolphins a lot,
worked with them.

There was a storm,
her boat turned over,

there was a plastic bag
with a bunch of tools in it,

that fell down to the bottom
and was lost.

After the storm, she's down at the beach,

she's going out for a swim,
there's a dolphin there waiting,

as was often the case,
to go swimming with her,

and the dolphin takes her out to a spot,
and dives down,

and brings up her toolkit in its mouth.

And hands it too her.
You know? No! (Laughter).

So she takes the toolkit,
and then the dolphin swam away.

I mean, that was its purpose,

like, "I'm going to get your stuff,
come on, let's go."

(Laughter)

They are also artists.

Dolphins blow bubble rings.

I couldn't find a non copyrighted picture.

But go online and search
on that, dolphins' bubble rings.

So they blow rings,
they look like doughnuts,

and they can change them
into all kinds of shapes,

they like to swim through them
and be creative

and do multiple bubble rings.

And they also express frustration,

If the bubble rings
aren't doing what they want,

and they slap them with their tails,
and, you know,

exhibit feelings,
like it seems that they're frustrated.

Maybe not.

Dolphin brains are very different
from our brains,

they are larger,
and what makes them larger

is that they have more brain material

in the area of the brain
that is devoted to higher functions.

Dolphins also have more grey matter
than humans,

and their grey matter has more folds in it
than humans' grey matter.

At first, when I heard about this,
I thought,

"You know,
other things would be persons too,

like elephants, dogs,
and this and that."

But then, after these details, I thought,

"Oh, actually, dolphins have the second
most complex brain on the planet,

and there's no close third."

Their brains are way more complex
than great apes,

they're much closer to us

in a lot of different ways
of measuring intelligence and things.

They also have the emotional centers
of their brains more integrated

with their motor and sensory perception,

and also their higher functioning parts
of their brains

where we would be doing reasoning.

So, as opposed to us,

where our emotional center
is more isolated,

in dolphins it's pretty integrated,
they are touching along a lot of surface.

So it might be possible

that dolphins can't be out of touch
with their emotions.

And they clearly have emotions,

and they clearly grieve,

and they clearly experience joy,

or whatever they call it, joy.

So my student said to me,

"By dolphin standards,

humans might be autistic."

(Laughter)

I know, it's kind of funny,

but this is very meaningful too,

because he grew up
with an autistic brother,

so he knew what he was talking about.

He was like, "We're probably autistic,"

and I said, "Oh my gosh,
we're autistic compared to dogs,

we're autistic compared to,
you know, you've got a long list."

There are all kinds of cetaceans,

and it's not just dolphins,
that we find amazing relationships.

There was a humpback whale,
so 40-50 feet long, a humpback whale.

Up the coast of San Francisco,
in 2005,

this was the very first successful time

we ever unwrapped a humpback whale
that was trapped in all kinds of ropes.

And it had crab pot ropes all over,
it had twenty of them.

They are about 240 feet long,
they have weights every 60 feet,

and several of them
had 90-pound crab pots still on them.

And there was one wrapped
multiple times around its tail,

there was one in its mouth, all over it.

It was in very bad shape,
and a call went in,

some highly experienced divers
went out, and risked their lives,

because one swish of a humpback's tail
could easily kill a diver.

The whale stayed still,

it had little trouble staying up
because of the weights connected to it,

while they carefully, with curved knives,

because the ropes were cutting
into its blubber,

with curved knives they cut
all of the ropes away.

And the whale,

when it realized it was free,

it swam all over the place, and they said
it looked like it was frolicking,

and then they had this vibration
going on in the water, the whole time,

that they could feel.

Then the humpback whale,
this is a 50 ton animal,

went up to every single diver,
individually, and nuzzled them,

and then swam away.

So we're in this intimate
relationship with them,

of course we already live together,

but we're being like
really bad roommates.

We're being like roommates that

threw all of our garbage
in our roommates' bedroom,

and we ate all their food,

and their parents came over
and we killed them,

and then we ate them!

(Laughter)

And this is the truth.

And then we figure out,

"Wow, oh my gosh, these roommates
are actually really cool,

wonderful individuals,
I'd like to get to know them.

I've been treating them so badly,
this is terrible."

So we have a great opportunity

to expand our relationships,
which is wonderful.

What's not wonderful is that

scientists predict
that we're going to lose

most of the dolphins to extinction,
forever, by 2100.

And that is not acceptable to me.

Can I get a witness?

(Applause)

Yeah, that is not acceptable.

The extinction crisis,

the numbers we're on track for,
right now, for all life on Earth,

is somewhere between 25 and 50%
becoming extinct by 2100.

Somewhere between 25 and 50%
becoming extinct by 2100.

Usually this is where people
want to turn off their minds,

like, "That hurt,
maybe I didn't hear that right",

or it bounces off
because it's such a high number.

But we have to look at this,
even though it hurts.

I think a bit like,
if I went into an emergency room,

or somebody goes into an emergency room
and they're hurt, badly,

and the doctors are like,
'Wow! I don't want to look at that,

oh man, that's gonna be bad!

When do I get off?"

You know we've got to go,
"Okay, what's the situation?

And how are we going to handle it?"

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

So, the cool thing
about the extinction crisis,

is that we all go, or nobody goes.

We can't save dolphins without saving
millions of other species in the process.

Which is fantastic.

So we all go, or nobody goes.

The challenge right now,

like the late Thomas Perry said,

"What we have to do is the great work."

I say, "What we have to do
is restore World Garden.

That's what I call it.

We have to restore world garden.

(Applause)

Yeah!

And it's a big get to.

So, what I want to talk about are --

all my degrees are
Environmental Sciences degrees.

I was actually a tree hugger as a child,

I didn't even know
there was a term for that,

and I was hugging trees as a child.

Really!

I was eating dirt, too.

So I'm going to give you four big ideas,
that are things that we need to do

if we're going to restore World Garden.

The first one is the hardest,
but it's not optional.

And that's not it.

Am I pushing the wrong button?

Oh, there it is.

Uh, you cannot even tell what that is.

That is a really bad image of a plan

from the Fish and Wildlife folks
up in Vermont,

but what we need to do
is reconnect our habitats.

We have fragmented our habitats,
and that's one of the major reasons

for the extinction crisis.

So, what we've created on terrestrial
Earth, is a bunch of islands,

they are isolated.

So, if you imagine a Persian carpet,
a large Persian carpet,

and it's got a beautiful,
complex design on it,

and every part of that carpet

is connected to every other part
of that carpet

through the warp and the weft,
in a series of complex relationships,

it's a good metaphor for an ecosystem.

So we cut that up,

paved over some of it,
burned some of it

thrown it away, whatever,
planted rice on it,

and there are pieces left,
but they're isolated,

and each one is not as incredible
as the entire Persian carpet,

and each one is commencing
to fall apart.

So we need to restore them,

and have protected areas
with corridors in between.

This is difficult,

we run into the Fifth Amendment,
on property rights,

and all kinds of other things,
but it's actually not optional.

If we want to be stewards
of the future of life

and maintain habitability on this Planet,

this is not optional,
so we might as well say,

"Yeah, we get to do it."

The fact that it's not optional
makes the fact that it's hard

pretty much irrelevant.
(Laughter)

As far as I'm concerned.

(Applause)

And just like Drew said,
most of the things worth having,

or most of the accomplishments
worth achieving, are hard.

So this is fantastic,

restore World Garden on this one.

Another tremendous opportunity,
is microalgae.

We already have
a sustainable fuel available,

and I've been preaching
about microalgae for years,

and I'm going to preach about it tonight!

And you'll know why, and you walk out
with microalgae forever in your soul.

I'm going to save you.

Alright, I'm going to heal you.

Some species of microalgae
are very fatty.

They are 70% or more lipid by weight.

We can grow them,

we don't do this in the ocean,
and squeeze the ocean,

we grow them in an isolated place.

So we grow them,
and we can press the oil out of them,

and then we can use that oil
for lots of industries.

You can just burn straight in,
or we convert it to biodiesel,

or whatever we want.

The incredible thing
about microalgae is this.

The best crop we have right now,
for producing oil, is oil palm.

With oil palm we can produce, maybe,
650 gallons per acre per year,

maybe a couple more hundreds
than that.

But that's it.

In North Carolina,

most promising for us
would be rapeseed,

which may be 47 gallons
per acre per year.

With microalgae, by 1999,

the US government
had already demonstrated

5 to 10 thousand gallons
per acre per year.

There's a company out there that,
a couple years ago,

said they demonstrated
30,000 gallons per acre per year,

and they knew they could do 100.

So, if we do this sustainably,
there's no downside,

and if you go online and you search
Green XPrize and microalgae,

John Richard and I did a two-minute

pitch for the Green XPrize competition,

and you can kind of learn everything
you need to know to begin, in two minutes.

So I encourage you, if you're interested.

If we would burn our forest,

it could save us.

No.
(Laughter)

This a power charcoal,
this is the power charcoal,

this is biochar,
and biochar can save us.

So, Drew was up here
talking about reducing emissions,

and getting to 3.50,
we've got to get to 3.50.

3.50 is the goal.

So we have to turn around
and take a big step forward.

Biochar is one of the ways to do this.

Because, since we're above 3.50,

we've got to start doing
sequestration today.

Down in South America, there were soils
that anthropologists call Dark Earth,

Terra Preta, and they didn't know
where these soils had come from,

because they were round areas,
where there had been civilizations.

They didn't know people lived there,
because the Dark Earth was there,

because it produced a lot more,

or if the people had somehow
made these soils this way,

that they're highly productive.

And we found out
that they made them that way,

by making biochar,
and mixing it into the soil,

because it radically improves
electron transport and some other things.

So we've decimated our soils.

This is a great win win, because

we can rebuild our soils,
and this is a wonderful way

to start doing that,

and the carbon

that gets in there
is sequestered.

We have the data.

People did it for us.

The carbon stays for thousands of years,

it doesn't just decompose
and return to the atmosphere.

Because it's not decomposing,
it's just interacting with things,

but it's not changing its form.

So this is incredible,
biochar is fantastic,

and a way to a sustainable future.

And finally, there's just one special
class of beings that need to have

attention paid to them, specifically.

And that is because
they are the birth of life.

And they are the pollinators.

A lot of people know that we're having
a colony collapse disorder

with the European honeybees,
but what most people don't know

is that for decades
our native pollinators,

which are better
than the European honeybees,

our native pollinators
have been crashing.

Those populations have been crashing.

It's primarily because of pesticide use
and a loss of habitat somewhat,

but primarily pesticide use.

So this is something that you and I can do
for sure in our lives,

whether we plant a pollinator garden
-without pesticides- on our own property

or encourage the city to do it,
or make sure other people are doing it;

learn about what kind of plants
work for pollinators.

When I was a little kid

I've always had this connection
to bees and wasps, I don't know why.

There's a bumblebee,
you can't see it very well,

on my scarlet runner beans,

which were covered with bees
all summer, I just loved it.

When I was a little kid,
I used to carry bumble bees around.

I never got stung.

My mum would say,
"You're going to get stung,"

and I'd say, "No. I'm not!"

You know, I was just,
"Wow! these are neat!"

They're more than neat,
they're the future of life,

so they deserve
special stewardship attention,

if we care about ourselves.

It's for our own self-interest.

All of this is for our own self-interest.

So back to dolphins for a minute.

Maybe dolphins
are non-human persons,

I don't know
if they are non-human persons.

But what I do know,

is that when we interact
with non-human beings,

and instead of thinking of them as 'it',

-- which means you don't interact
with them, they are just 'its' --

instead of being with them as an 'it',

if we are with them as a 'you',
or as a 'thou',

that increases our own humanness,

and that makes our own life
far more meaningful.

And I hope that you will walk out of here
with different eyes,

and question the other species,

as Native Americans would say,

the two legged people,
the four legged people,

the swimming people,
the flying people,

the crawling people,

I would add
the photosynthesizing people,

(Laughter)

and welcome them to the family,

and let's restore World Garden!

Thank you!

(Applause)