Speak to Me!

THE MIND OF THE DOLPHIN: A NONHUMAN INTELLIGENCE by John Cunningham Lilly, M.D. 310 pages. Doubleday, $5.95.

Like Dr. John Dolittle, Dr. John Lilly is possessed by the idea that humans can and should learn to communicate with other species. To that end, he has spent the past several years learning about bottlenose dolphins, the species that he believes will eventually make the breakthrough.

Why dolphins? Lilly explains that the brain of the seagoing mammal, which is 20% to 40% larger than man's, seems to be at least as complex in structure. This, as well as the dolphin's clever mannerisms, suggests to him that its intelligence may be equal to or even surpass man's.

To measure the extent and nature of that intelligence, Lilly established his unique Dolphin Point Laboratory in the Virgin Islands, and in this intriguing but eccentric book he describes how he has examined and trained dolphins, recorded and analyzed their voices, lived like them--and even with them. Lilly, a neurophysiologist who has also had training in physics and biophysics, has spent hours underwater in a darkened pool, attempting to understand the sensations experienced by dolphins. He believes that dolphins try to communicate with man by mimicking human voices and he has cooperated in experiments trying to teach dolphins to speak English. (No success as yet.)

Margaret Howe, Lilly's attractive young researcher, actually lived with a dolphin named Peter in a flooded room for 21 months in an attempt to communicate more effectively. She found Peter to be very responsive. As a matter of fact, Peter exhibited considerable interest in effecting some kind of sexual breakthrough, indicating that Dr. Lilly may be a good deal nearer the truth about inter-species communication than even he suspected.

Lilly undermines his accomplishments, and his book, with a stubborn allegiance to an unsubstantiated theory: that mammals with brains larger than man's are more intelligent than man. Without offering any scientific documentation, he suggests that the sperm whale, whose brain is six times as big as man's, could hear a symphony once, store it in his computerlike mind and play it back to himself note by note. Says Lilly wistfully: "I would like to exchange ideas with a sperm whale." The last fellow who dared to say that was Captain Ahab.

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