Humans and dolphins are

The similarity between the human brain and the dolphin brain shows that humans "resemble" this intelligent animal more than we think and brain size is not everything.

A thorough study of the dolphin genome reveals obvious similarities between dolphins and humans.

The new study, published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society , suggests that certain genetic characteristics have led to the convergence of large brains and complex cognition in a few. Species, including dolphins and humans.

Dolphins are judged smart by scientists only after humans

'It has long been acknowledged that dolphins are among the smartest mammal species, and they can do many things that giant apes can do like self-awareness, communication, and catching. imitate and spread culture , 'said research leader Michael McGowen. He added that the dolphin's brain also has 'distinct and distinct' features.

McGowen - a research specialist at the Medical and Evolutionary Center at Wayne University Medical School in Detroit (USA) and colleagues Lawrence Grossman and Derek Wildman compared nearly 10,000 selected protein-coding genes from the genome. Dolphins with genes equivalent to nine other animal species including cows, horses, dogs, mice, humans, elephants, pompoms, platypus and chickens. Among them, cows are the most closely related species of dolphins. However, these two species are separated by 70 million years of history.

The most obvious similarity is between dolphins, people and elephants. All three are known for their great brains and intelligence.

The team found that these smart animals have adaptive evolution of nervous system genes, proving that quality is more important than quantity.

In other words, in relation to brain function, size does not say everything. Mr. McGowen said in the brain, 'folds, number of synapses, white matter versus gray matter' and other factors seem to be predictable measurements of intelligence.

In addition, dolphins are also found to have genes involved in intellectual disorders and sleep in humans. These intellectual disorders strongly assert that they are related to intelligence and may be related to cognitive abilities in dolphins.

For sleep, scientists found that a specific gene similar to humans and related to alertness was altered in dolphins.

"Dolphins have an unusual pattern of sleep, each time only one side of the brain goes to sleep and during this period they continue to swim and still have some cognitive ability ," he said. ' This is interesting because we have found a gene that may be related to this unusual distinguishing trait.'

All these findings may reinforce the fact that dolphins are the second smartest animal in the world, just behind humans.