Are you as smart as a dolphin?

When I was in primary school, I remember being told to pick up rubbish in the playground. Usually, this came with requirement of how many pieces to pick up. Being a diligent student, I would do the hard yards and pick the largest, most visible scraps from the yard.

One day, my best mate pointed out a way to work smarter. He would look for the choicest scraps of paper, and meticulously tear them apart to multiply the pieces of rubbish picked up per distance travelled.

It turns out that my mate had more in common with Spock the dolphin than I. Dolphins at Marine World, Redwood City, were encouraged to tidy up their pool at the end of the day by being rewarded with a fish for each bit of litter that they brought to the trainer.

One day, there was a paper bag stuck in an inlet pipe in the pool. Spock would swim to the paper bag, tear a small piece off, and receive a fish for his hard work. He would then return to the inlet pipe, rip off another piece, return, and repeat. If he accidentally dislodged the entire bag, he'd push it back in and extract yet another scrap.^[1]

You can read more about this clever creature here.