> Dolphins can:
> detect eels wriggling about underneath a muddy seabed
That+s a pretty good trick! Maybe due to mud having similar density to seawater and eels a very different density?
> tell the difference between two metal drums, identical except that
their
> walls differ in thickness by a few tenths of a millimetre.
No surprise here. Metal drums are highly resonant, like tubular bells or, well, drums. Drums of different wall thickness should have different resonant frequencies. There should be nothing easier for sonar users than distinguishing between objects with different resonant frequencies.
> tell the difference between a fresh fish and one that isn't quite
so nice
>(apparently without using any cues other than what they can tell from
sonar)
This I+m not so sure about. "Not so nice fish" are most easily identified by taste or smell, senses which work quite well under water for other aquatic organisms. I really doubt that dolphins would show any patience for a research to try to control for this by disabling their senses, and I just don+t think the smell could be masked.
>This seems good enough to be darksense to me.
Well it doesn+t seem nearly good enough for me. Since this is a role playing-related list, let me try a role playing style argument. . . .
Let+s say you+re Drosophilla, a sonar-only value trollkin serving the Two-Legs-Can+t-be-seen clan. You+ve been ordered to help arrange food for a feast to celebrate an important visitor.
The visitor is the daughter of the clan priestess-mother, who, after suffering eleven consecutive miscarriages (no trollkin even) gave in to her anger and sorrow and joined Zorak Zoran. This of course is unheard of. But she survived, and being very large (My personal belief: Uz gain SIZ when pregnant), determined, emotionally unhinged, and of course, female, she+s now beaten her way up the ZZ clan heirarchy to the rank of Deathlady. She has dropped her original name and favors the moniker "Crush".
Needless to say, the clan has mixed emotions about her visit, and is not discussing the visitor. One thing is certain: No one is bothering to tell the trollkin that a large, unstable and violent guest is going to be roaming the warren.
Question: Your life may well depend on noticing how upset everyone is. How does darksense help you do this? No ones density, outline, texture, or state of hunger is changed by this potentially life threatening (for you) condition.
Lets say Auntie Girren, the XU priestess, has out of pity warned you of the situation just before sending you to work in the side pantry. You're very nervous. You+ve just finished arranging the dung beetle grubs en ball and are starting to skewer mastadon roaches for the centerpiece when a hulking figure stomps into the room. It doesn+t greet you.
Time slows to a crawl. Do you dare ping it?. Is it Auntie Crush? How do you find out?
What is the mechanism for idendifying individuals by sonar?
Let+s say you can somehow tell that it is Auntie Crush. You can tell that she+s hungry. Is she angry? More important. Is she irrational?
Your life depends on figuring out the answer right now. What is the sonar mechanism for doing this?
You options as I see them:
If she+s happy, rational and hungry, not offering her obesceince and food will make her angry and she will likely kill you.
If she+s angry, rational and hungry, not offering her obesceince and food means she will certainly kill you.
If she+s angry, irrational and hungry, she+ll kill and eat you if she notices you.
You have three heartbeats to decide what to do, how do you assess her mental/emotional state using sonar?
I don+t see how you can. You+re dead meat.
This may be an extreme case, but the primary sense used by any intelligent culture has to be able to deal with these kind of situations, it has to support rabid non-verbal communication. Nonverbal communication is extremely important to social interaction, and I don+t know about anyone else, but facial expression does not seem to me to be dolphins strong suit.
Further points:
I don+t think there+s enough bandwidth in verbalization to carry both the spoken and unspoken communication of fully intelligent beings.
In order to pole play we visually oriented hoomans have to be able to "visualize" how the senses of our characters work. Over all we+ve blended visual imagery into darksense to a huge extent. All the evidence indicates that it makes the world really very different.
There are no examples of even a low level animal society that relies on sonar for social interaction. Dolphins for example, stay close together in shallow, well lit water, and probably rely on visual and "verbal" cues as much as or more than sonar for social interactions.
Hope this makes my concerns clearer.
Frank Giles
End of The Glorantha Digest V5 #40
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