No Sins Save Gluttony

Jonathan Leake, in the Sunday Times, reports that scientists have recently declared dolphins as “the world’s second most intelligent creatures after humans.” Quite apart from the obvious evaluator bias, I am delighted that some among your kind finally recognize that whales and dolphins possess a level of intelligence, social skills, and self-awareness significantly higher than three-year-old children and chimpanzees—two groups to whom my kind has been erroneously compared in the past. Now I have nothing against children or chimps but please, a baby dolphin mere seconds after birth demonstrates cognitive, verbal, and motor skills far beyond those of either group, not to mention being able to echo-locate a shrimp at a thousand yards. Try that the next time you take your little one (or pet ape) to the seashore. Unfortunately, this declaration has apparently incensed some morons among your kind who have expressed their outrage in the blogosphere, at least to the degree that their monosyllabic minds and propensity for vulgarity allow. Whatever. Whether these buffoons like it or not, dolphins are equally as intelligent as humans are, and we are far less likely to exhibit the Seven Deadly Sins of wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony—with the possible exception of gluttony, as might be the case whenever a school of fat, juicy anchovies is present.