In Defense of Dolphins: The New Moral Frontier

By Thomas I. White

Blackwell ₤12.99, 256 pages

FT bookshop price: ₤10.39

Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind

By Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth

University of Chicago Press ₤16, 358 pages

In a few specially constructed research facilities around the world, scientists are attempting to decode the mysteries of an alien intelligence. These beings have brains 40 per cent larger than ours, and a sixth sense that enables them to see through solid objects. Though they clearly communicate in complex ways, their language is indecipherable to us. Fortunately, they seem to come in peace.

These creatures are no newcomers to earth: indeed, they have been around for at least 10 million years. They are dolphins. And according to Thomas I. White, in his In Defense of Dolphins, they deserve a little more respect. White’s book, like Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth’s Baboon Metaphysics, shows that many of the qualities we think make us special are shared by our mammalian cousins.

There are many tales from around the world of dolphins’ playfulness and curiosity, and even of their coming to the aid of stricken sailors. White tells the story of one researcher whose dinghy was overturned in a storm. When she next swam in the same bay, a familiar dolphin sought her attention. The dolphin dived and surfaced with a heavy white bag which it placed in her hands. The bag contained the tool kit from her dinghy.

We are used to the idea that animals can fly or swim better than us. But the thought that they may be nicer - even wiser - may be harder to swallow.

Even the humble baboon can be persuaded to do humans a good turn, as the Namaqua people of Namibia have long known. For centuries, they have ”hired” baboons as goatherds. A South African railwayman who had lost both his legs in an accident even trained a friendly baboon to work the signals for him.

Cheney and Seyfarth argue that, though dunces compared to dolphins, there is much we can learn from baboons about ourselves and our evolutionary history. The baboon brain is a social one. Males spend their time in a way familiar to anyone who has frequented city pubs on a Friday night: shouting and scrapping in an effort to impress the ladies. Meanwhile, baboons of the fairer sex engage in a complex web of family and class relationships worthy of a Jane Austen novel.

Cheny and Seyfarth tell of a member of the British royal family who came to visit them in the field. Upon being told of the baboon’s class-based society, she was ”excited and relieved,” and declared that she ”always knew hereditary rank was a part of human nature”.

We may be better off with the dolphins.