PARIS (AFP) – As the future of whales once more comes under global debate, some scientists say the marine mammals are not only smarter than thought but also share several attributes once claimed as exclusively human.

Self-awareness, suffering and a social culture along with high mental abilities are a hallmark of cetaceans, an order grouping more than 80 whales, dolphins and porpoises, say marine biologists.

If so, the notion that whales are intelligent and sentient beings threatens to demolish, like an explosive harpoon, the assumption that they are simply an animal commodity to be harvested from the sea.

That belief lies at the heart of talks unfolding at the International Whaling Commission (IWC), meeting from Monday to Friday in Agadir, Morocco.

A fiercely-contested proposal would authorise whale hunts by Japan, Norway and Iceland for 10 more years, ending a 24-year spell in which these nations -- tarred as outlaws by a well-organised green campaign -- have snubbed or sidelined the IWC's moratorium on whaling.

"We now know from field studies that a lot of the large whales exhibit some of the most complex behaviour in the animal kingdom," said Lori Marino, a neurobiologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

A decade ago, Marino conducted an experiment with bottlenose dolphins in which she placed a small mark on their body and had the mammals look at themselves in a mirror.

By the way the dolphins reacted to the image and then looked at the spot, it was clear that they had a sense of self-identity, Marino determined.

For Georges Chapouthier, a neurobiologist and director of the Emotion Centre at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, self-awareness means that dolphin and whales, along with some higher primates, can experience not just pain but also suffering.

Unlike nociception -- a basic nerve response to harmful stimuli found in all animals -- or lower-order pain, "suffering supposes a certain level of cognitive functioning," he said in an interview.

"It is difficult to define what that level is, but there's a lot of data now to suggest some higher mammals have it, including great apes, dolphins and, most likely, whales."

As for intelligence, cetaceans are second only to humans in brain size, once body weight is taken into account.

More telling than volume, though, are cerebral areas which specialise in cognition and emotional processing -- and the likelihood that this evolution was partly driven by social interaction, according to several peer-reviewed studies.
Some scientists suggest this interaction can best described as culture, a notion usually reserved for homo sapiens.