© 1975-1979, 2008 Robert A. Freitas Jr. All Rights Reserved.

Robert A. Freitas Jr., Xenology: An Introduction to the Scientific Study of Extraterrestrial Life, Intelligence, and Civilization, First Edition, Xenology Research Institute, Sacramento, CA, 1979; http://www.xenology.info/Xeno.htm

3.3  The Resident Aliens

The thrust of the chapter thus far has been the search for evidence of ETs on Earth in both ancient and contemporary mythology. But we must be careful not to overlook a possibly limitless source of alien intelligence indigenous to our own planet.

Until quite recently it was supposed that the basic mental capacities of thinking or reasoning -- intelligence -- served as a clear distinction between humans and other members of the animal world. Today we know we’re not so unique. It appears that virtually all living creatures possess at least the rudiments of intelligence; many elements of intellect appear in varying degrees across the phyla of the animal kingdom (especially the chordates and mollusks). Intelligence is therefore not a quality peculiar to humans or mammals alone but is developed and refined by all lifeforms.

The textbook definition of intelligence is: "The capacity to utilize experience in adapting to new situations." But what do we really mean by intelligent behavior? Even a virus could be said to be "learning" when its DNA changes to adapt to new environments.

There are two approaches. The first is functional, keying on the important functions of intellect such as the capacity for self-awareness.

The second approach is structural: What is the ultimate mental capacity of the neural network of a creature, viewed as a system? The structural approach allows facility of comparison between various animal species, and the results are rather interesting. The analysis focuses on a single organ possessed by virtually every animal -- the brain.

While it is widely recognized that high intelligence is the product of an elaborate brain,^439,443,1000 a few qualifications are in order. First, within the normal range of variations of a species among its members, difference in brain size is unrelated to the intelligence of the individual animal.⁴⁴⁴ As much as 800 grams has separated human brains of apparently equal intelligence. And since organ proportions change during growth, only mature average organisms can be validly compared. Brain size is a valuable criterion only when we compare differences between adult members of different species of animal (Table 3.2).

* Adapted from Altman Dittmer,³⁶⁸ Spector,⁴⁸ Lilly,²¹⁷ Allen,³⁰⁹ Portmann-Stingelin,⁹⁶⁰ and Buettner-Janusch.¹⁹²⁷
** Normalized to 1.00 for man.

Note: b is average species adult male brain weight, in grams. (b/B) is fraction of body weight represented by brain.  The last column, b•(b/B), is the product of both these factors. A large value indicates that the organism has both a high brain mass and a high brain-to-body weight ratio, which raises the presumption of higher intellective capacity.

Further, size alone is not a sufficient determinant of the depth of intellect although it does fix the perimeters of mental complexity. Other factors such as neuronal density, complexity and design of brain tissue convolutions, size and efficiency of neurons, average number of intersynaptic connections and so forth are also important. Gross bulk, while a rough correlate of intelligence, is not a precise measure of it.^565,2560

It is difficult to say exactly where the threshold of human intelligence lies. It is known that human infants become facile with language only after their brain mass exceeds 800-1000 grams.²¹⁷ Yet this is not a reliable cutoff point because, for instance, chimpanzees (brain weight 440 grams) raised in human company have acquired vocabularies of as many as 200 different word-symbols. Dogs, with smaller brains still, utilize a larger repertoire of signals than do many primates (but this may be because primates are vegetarian browsers while dogs are pack hunters requiring reliable intragroup communications¹⁵⁴²). Conversely, the walrus (brain weight 1130 grams) is not known to have any symbolic language at all.

Besides absolute brain size, the relative size of the organ with respect to the rest of the body is also important. This ratio is representative of the investment made by the organism in intelligence as a survival mechanism. (It is known, for example, that even the brains of some social insects are relatively larger than those of some vertebrates.⁹⁶⁵)

Of course, these are only rough indicia of intellective capacity, good only for comparing the order of magnitude of a creature’s mental acuity. But it is a safe bet that, in general, a 1000 gram brain will be smarter than a 100 gram brain, and a brain which represents 10% of the total body weight will be more complex than one which only embodies 1% of the total.^20,965

Were we to find on this planet other conscious minds with whom we might converse, it would be an excellent opportunity to practice our communication skills -- before attempting first contact with ETs with whom we share no common biological heritage. We might also discover some problems the extraterrestrials may confront in trying to deal with us, and learn to anticipate the solutions.

Are there resident aliens on Earth? As can be seen in the last column of Table 3.2, the cetaceans (dolphins and whales) come closest to man in terms of both absolute and relative brain size. Much has been written about the intelligence of cetaceans in popular fact^{15,1698,1699,1929} and fiction.¹⁹³¹ Their brains are highly convoluted and larger than human brains, and they are extremely social animals (aggregations of up to 100,000 individual saddle-backed dolphins have been observed roaming the open seas⁵⁶⁵). Anecdotes of friendly and helpful attitudes towards men abound. There are reports of porpoises saving persons from drowning, guiding ships through narrow, fog bound straits, and even of performing psychological¹⁵ and psychophysiological²¹⁷ tests on their human captors.

It is most difficult to measure dolphin intelligence and social abilities.¹⁷²⁴ The famous undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau has pointed out four basic conditions necessary "for the elaboration of a civilized society." These are: Brain, hand, language, and longevity.¹⁷²³

Porpoise and other cetaceans have brains nearly equal to our own, and possess lifespans of many decades. Whether or not they have a language remains to be proved. It is known that the humpback whale sings songs that often last more than 30 minutes and which are repeated with amazing accuracy.¹⁹³¹ Each season the songs are different.⁴²² Dolphins, too, are capable of amazing mimicry of sounds and human speech. They could have a language of their own: One anecdote tells of a porpoise held in captivity and later released which emitted a long, involved sequence of sounds in the presence of a school of dolphins it had encountered.¹⁵

Unfortunately, cetaceans do not have hands; any intelligence they may have cannot be worked out in technology. Sagan has hinted that the dolphins’ creative energies might have been diverted to social instead of material technology. Asks he: "Are whales and dolphins like human Homers before the invention of writing, telling of great deeds done in years gone by in the depths and far reaches of the sea?"¹⁵ Apparently a single whale song contains roughly the same number of bits of information as The Odyssey does! Cetaceans may turn out to be "fluked philosophers... introverts who can think but not do."⁹⁶

All this has motivated Arthur C. Clarke to proclaim: "There seems little doubt that dolphins think and speak much more rapidly than we do... And yet after decades of dedicated research into human/dolphin communication no major breakthroughs have occurred. Either the animal is not as intelligent as we had hoped, or communication with alien minds is a far more demanding task than anticipated.

Of course, the very fact that we have a vested emotional interest in finding porpoises to be intelligent should raise a flag of caution to the xenologist. The cardinal rule of evidence in xenology is that evidence must be compelling to be convincing. And most zoologists would agree that at present no such evidence exists in favor of cetacean super-intellect.^565,1723

Hence, while the dolphin possesses a huge brain and an exceptional ability to mimic, this does not necessarily imply consciousness or even high intelligence. Elephants, whose brains are more than three times larger than those of cetaceans, are known with reasonable certainty to possess an intelligence far below human level.⁵⁶⁵ Mynah birds and parrots are capable of imitating human speech rather well. The much-heralded altruistic cooperative behavior of marine mammals in rescuing injured comrades is also observed in wild dogs, African elephants and baboons,⁵⁶⁵ and may even be instinctual as a result of environmental necessities. Sociobiologist E. O. Wilson claims that delphinid, communication systems are no larger nor more complex that that of other mammals or birds.⁵⁶⁵ The common consensus among zoologists appears to be that the intelligence of the bottle-nosed dolphin can be ranked somewhere between the dog and the rhesus monkey.^1724,1932

This should not be taken as conclusive that cetaceans are not extraordinarily intelligent; the simple fact is that we just don’t know yet one way or the other. Certainly no evidence exists that would rule out this possibility. But because of the great potential inherent in such a discovery, we owe it to ourselves both to continue delphinology research with vigor and to demand compelling evidence before accepting specific conclusions.

As John Lilly has pointed out, there are two dangerous pitfalls to be studiously avoided during first contact. First is the danger of anthropomorphizing -- of assuming that the alien creature possesses the same psychological constitution as humans. The second danger is what Lilly calls zoo morphizing, the mistake of denying the existence of high intellect in complex, large-brained creatures solely by inference from data on much smaller-brained animals.²¹⁷ (Brian Aldiss addresses this very question in his science fiction satire The Dark Light Years.²²⁶)

Perhaps to truly comprehend the mind of the dolphin we shall have to learn to "live wetly." We must be willing to climb down into a tank of water and live as the alien himself lives. Both Lilly²⁰¹ and Brunner⁴⁴² have suggested that this may be the only way for true interspecies understanding to occur. A kind of primal empathy must be established between the two communicators.

Despite the tremendous promise of cetacean intelligence research, hundreds of thousands of dolphins are ruthlessly slaughtered for food each year by the Japanese and Russians. Our own merchant fleets have been killing comparable numbers incidental to tuna fishing operations.*

During the 1800’s whalers caught perhaps one animal per ship per month, but during the record catches of the last decade the average ship was hauling in a carcass every day.^422,1928 The explosive harpoon used by whalers has caused intense pain and suffering:

A 150 lb. weapon carrying an explosive head which bursts generally in the whale’s intestines, and the sight of one of these creatures pouring blood and gasping along on the surface, towing a 400-ton catching vessel by a heavy harpoon rope, is pitiful. So often an hour or more of torture is inflicted before the agony ends in death. I have experienced a case of five hours and nine harpoons needed to kill one mother blue whale.⁷¹⁰

Although it is true that "the exploiters of the cetaceans are spoiling our relationships to them,"²⁰¹ this is almost a trivial observation. There is a much larger lesson to be learned here.²⁰³⁶

Speciesism is a chauvinism so fundamental that its unabated continuance could wreck our relations with alien intelligences. As Peter Singer, a philosopher currently associated with La Trobe University in Australia, defines it: "…{Speciesism is} to discriminate against beings solely on account of their species, {an unethical practice} the same way that discrimination on the basis of race is immoral and indefensible."⁷¹²

Most of us are devout speciesists. Each year in the United States we condone the slaughter of ten million pigs, thirty million cattle, and more than three billion poultry animals to adorn our dinner plates. Sixty million rabbits, rats, and other pain-feeling creatures are tortured annually in experiments frequently unnecessary or useless.

Singer explains the moral dilemma this way: The modern philosophy of "equality," strictly speaking, is false. There are no two humans who are strictly equal physically or mentally. The scope of equality (unless tied to self-interest) must therefore be determined by some objective criterion, some common characteristic capable of distinguishing those who are equal from those who are not. The problem is that any trait possessed by all humans will also be possessed by some nonhuman animals; if the conditions are tightened so as to eliminate these animals, some humans will then be eliminated. (Check, for instance, the criteria of pain-feeling, rational thought, memory, etc.)

Most distinctions that can be drawn between humans and other animals are not sharp and unmistakable. Zoologically, most attributes smoothly blend into a continuum among the many animal species. And yet whenever there is a clash of interests, even if it is a choice between the life of a nonhuman animal and a human palate, the interests of the nonhuman are disregarded.⁷¹² No amount of pain and suffering on the part of our fellow creatures seems too high a price to pay for the slightest whims of people.

This attitude is most unhealthy from the xenological point of view. If mere membership in the Homo sapiens club is sufficient to grant us ethical license to cruelly maim laboratory animals, why cannot superior, research-minded aliens pick out "mere humans" for similar honors? If we may brutally slash and torment bulls in bullfights, why might not ETs be able to similarly justify the staging of gladiatorial mortal combats between "human dumb animals"? If we allow ourselves to eat the nonhumans who share this planet with us, what ethical barrier can stand in the way of highly-evolved, hungry aliens seeking to augment their menu with hairless primate meat?¹⁹⁴⁹** Speciesism is clearly one of our most dangerous chauvinisms.^{2115,2118,2136}

When sentient lifeforms are found elsewhere in our galaxy, we’ll need all the help we can get from terrestrial interspecies communication research. Experience must be gained in empathizing with nonhuman bodies, minds, and environments. Such experience will give us the unique opportunity to view human culture through alien eyes, a necessary preliminary to our understanding of how extraterrestrial aliens may evaluate us. And communication with resident aliens would be a major step towards the goal of eliminating our speciesist biases.

As Carl Sagan poignantly observes:

It is not a question of whether we are emotionally prepared in the long run to confront a message from the stars. It is whether we can develop a sense that beings with quite different evolutionary histories, beings who may look far different from us, even "monstrous," may, nevertheless, be worthy of friendship and reverence, brotherhood and trust. We have far to go; while there is every sign that the human community is moving in this direction, the question is, are we moving fast enough?¹⁵

* The use of any marine mammal for food in the United States was outlawed by the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. A white meat preparation known as mahi mahi (or "dolphinfish") is fish and not porpoise-flesh (which is full of hemoglobin and therefore dark red in color⁶³³) as some mistakenly believe.

** More than a decade ago, science fiction author Michael Kurland (and others) drew up a list of advantages in joining the Galactic Federation, to be presented to the United Nations should the appropriate occasion ever arise. At the top of the list was the following: All intelligent species shall have the right not to serve as food for other races.⁷⁸

Last updated on 6 July 2013