Hi there, it’s Danny! I love watching animals and seeing all the cool things they do. Let’s explore some amazing animal talents together!
Have you ever seen a bird dance? Meet the cockatoo! This bird loves to dance to music. Some cockatoos even use sticks to make their own beats. Isn’t that awesome?
Now, let’s talk about orangutans. Did you know they can make hats out of leaves? They use these leaf hats to stay dry when it rains. How smart is that?
Our friend Claire wants to know if dolphins are one of the smartest animals. To find out, we need to think about what makes an animal smart. Is it using tools like the cockatoo or solving problems like the orangutan?
Watch this elephant move a tire. Why do you think it’s doing that? It’s trying to reach fruit in a tree! The elephant uses the tire as a tool to help it get the fruit. That’s some clever thinking!
Dolphins are great problem solvers too. In Shark Bay, Australia, dolphins use sea sponges on their beaks to protect themselves from sharp rocks. They even work together to trap fish by making a wall of mud. Teamwork and problem-solving make dolphins really smart!
Dolphins are also amazing communicators. They use whistles and chirps to talk to each other. Some whistles mean they’re happy, others mean they’re scared, and some mean they’ve found food. Dolphins even have special whistles that act like their names. It’s like saying, “Hey, I’m over here!”
Did you know that mirrors can show us how animals think? When we look in a mirror, we know it’s us. Most animals don’t recognize themselves, but dolphins do! They even play in front of mirrors for fun. Other animals like chimpanzees, orangutans, and some elephants can do this too, but not many.
Dolphins are special because they use tools, communicate in smart ways, and recognize themselves in mirrors. That’s why many people think they’re some of the smartest animals around!
Thanks for joining me to learn about these amazing animals. Keep asking questions and stay curious. There are so many mysteries to explore!
Animal Dance Party: Just like the dancing cockatoo, let’s have a dance party! Play some music and try to dance like different animals. Can you flap your arms like a bird or hop like a kangaroo? Invite your friends or family to join and see who can come up with the most creative animal dance!
Leaf Hat Craft: Inspired by the clever orangutan, let’s make our own leaf hats! Go outside and collect some leaves. With the help of an adult, use string or glue to attach the leaves together to make a hat. Wear your leaf hat and pretend you’re an orangutan in the jungle. How does it feel to wear a hat made of leaves?
Dolphin Communication Game: Dolphins use special sounds to communicate. Let’s play a game to understand how they might feel. Create different sounds or use musical instruments to represent different emotions like happy, sad, or excited. Take turns making a sound and have others guess what emotion you’re trying to express. How do you think dolphins feel when they use their special whistles?
Sure! Here’s a sanitized version of the transcript:
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Hi, it’s Danny! One of my favorite things to do is observe animals and how they act. It’s so fun watching all the amazing things they can do!
This bird is a cockatoo. Watch how it dances to the beat of the music! [Music] And that’s not all—some cockatoos use sticks as tools to make beats of their own. Pretty amazing, right?
Okay, let me show you one more thing. Ready for it? Introducing an orangutan wearing a hat! Orangutans have been known to make umbrella hats out of leaves to keep them dry from the rain. That’s so cool!
Someone named Claire is curious about another amazing animal. Let’s give Claire a call now.
Hi, Danny! Hi, Claire! I have a question for you. Are dolphins really one of the smartest animals in the world?
That’s a great question! But before we answer it, we kind of have to figure out what counts as smart in the animal world. Is it using a tool like a cockatoo can, or is it solving a problem like keeping dry from the rain, like an orangutan does when it makes an umbrella hat?
Figuring out how smart an animal is isn’t easy, but we can find clues by observing how they’re using their brains to think.
Watch this elephant move a tire. You’ll see why in a second, and that might give you a clue about how the elephant is using its brain to think.
Now, would be a good time to pause the video and discuss why you think this elephant is moving that tire.
Okay, you ready? I don’t know what you thought, but here’s the rest of the video. You may have already guessed that the elephant is trying to get fruit from that tree. Finding food like that takes thinking. Your dog or cat has to think to find its food bowl, and a bird has to think to find a worm.
But what this elephant is doing takes a little more thinking than just finding food. It can’t reach the fruit in that tree, so it’s using a tire as a tool to help climb up and get it. Whoa! It takes a special kind of thinking to solve a problem with a tool like that—a kind of thinking that only a few animals have.
Like this dolphin! See that thing on its beak? That’s a sea sponge. The dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia, were getting cut by sharp rocks at the bottom of the ocean—that’s a problem. So some of them started wearing sea sponges on their beaks like helmets, so they wouldn’t get hurt while hunting for food. Problem-solving like that takes more thinking than just finding a bowl of food.
And it’s not just the dolphins in Australia that can problem-solve. Dolphins all over the world are pretty incredible at thinking like that. For example, these dolphins thought up a great way to trap fish. See how that dolphin is making a wall of mud? The other members of its pod chase the fish into the wall of mud, and the fish get trapped like in a big net. What a great idea!
Working as a team to hunt and trap fish like that definitely takes a special kind of thinking. But that’s not all these dolphins are doing—they’re communicating while they’re looking for food, and that takes thinking to a whole new level.
Hear those whistles? Those whistles aren’t just random sounds—they mean something! Dolphins use different whistles and chirps to communicate where they are when they’re hunting. Some types of whistles mean they’re happy, some mean they’re scared, and some types mean they’ve found a large school of fish to eat and need help rounding them all up.
Get this: dolphins are such good communicators that they even have a special whistle to identify themselves. It’s like their name! They use this special name whistle to tell their pods where they are, so they don’t get lost. Kind of like saying, “Hey, I’m over here!” Pretty cool!
Dolphins have to think in a special way to communicate like that, which makes animal experts believe they’re some of the best thinkers in the animal world. Communicating takes thinking, so observing how animals like dolphins communicate is a good way to tell how smart they are.
But it’s not the only way. You can also observe how an animal thinks by using one of these—a mirror! I’m serious! A mirror is a great way to tell how an animal thinks. When we look at a mirror, we know we’re looking at ourselves, and that takes a certain type of thinking.
We have to think, “Hey, that person in the mirror is moving their arms like I am and they’re smiling like I am. Whoa, that’s me!” But believe it or not, most animals don’t recognize their reflections in a mirror. They might ignore it, think it’s another animal and try to play with it, or they might even get scared.
But not dolphins! Bottlenose dolphins not only recognize themselves in a mirror, they even seem to enjoy it! They’ll open their mouths to see what’s inside or do tricks in front of it just for fun.
Now, dolphins aren’t the only animals that can recognize their reflections. Chimpanzees can, so can orangutans, and some elephants. But there just aren’t that many that can, and that’s just one more reason why animal experts believe that dolphins are some of the smartest thinkers in the world.
Sure, all animals think, but dolphins show a special kind of thinking when they solve problems by using tools like sea sponge helmets, when they communicate with each other while they’re hunting for food and have special whistle names for themselves, and when they recognize themselves in a mirror, which is something most animals can’t do. Amazing!
That’s all for this week’s question. Thanks, Claire, for asking it! We’ll be back with a new episode in a couple of weeks, but in the meantime, here are some older questions from the question jar you can vote on for next week. You can choose from: Why do we have eyebrows? What causes the Northern Lights? Or how do they turn wood into paper?
So submit your vote when the video is over. We want to hear from all of you watching! There are mysteries all around us. Stay curious, and see you next week!
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Let me know if you need any further modifications!
