Studying the behavior of large whales has been likened to astronomy. The observer glimpses his subjects, often at long range; he cannot do experiment…

- Hal Whitehead

It's kind of ironic that when you look at the evidence of intelligence and so on, a lot of it is anecdotal. A lot of it is, "Well, we saw this dolphi…

- Hal Whitehead

Psychologists would say that the only two important forms of social learning are imitation and teaching, and they will spend time trying to figure ou…

- Hal Whitehead

Conversation with animals could happen, but I think it would be easier for it to happen with creatures we share a bit more with - those that have bee…

- Hal Whitehead

Whales are cultural animals, and we're cultural animals, so although we shouldn't expect whales to do what we do, it doesn't seem unreasonable to hyp…

- Hal Whitehead

What I mean is, if you look at the behavior of an animal and ask, "Well, why did it do that?" and then consider the alternatives, those alternatives …

- Hal Whitehead

Quite a lot of what we normally think of as human culture doesn't fit some definition. What are the values behind cuisine, which is a form of human c…

- Hal Whitehead

We believe we're seeing, in other animals, a process, or an attribute, that isn't fundamentally different from what we see in humans, so it seems to …

- Hal Whitehead

When I'm out in the ocean and I watch a seabird, I think, "Oh, I probably I know what that seabird is doing" - and I don't study seabirds. And the sa…

- Hal Whitehead