Cetaceans demonstrate remarkable cognitive abilities including culture, language, and self-awareness. Their intelligence is central to understanding and advocating for their welfare.
The cognitive complexity of cetaceans places them among the most morally significant non-human animals on Earth. Their documented culture, complex communication, self-awareness, and social relationships constitute a form of richly experienced life that gives welfare harms profound moral weight. These findings have direct implications for how we evaluate the welfare significance of captivity, bycatch mortality, acoustic pollution, and hunting. Cetaceans in captivity experience the loss not just of space but of complex social worlds; in the wild, pollution and noise intrude on sophisticated acoustic communication systems. Welfare advocacy for cetaceans must be grounded in this cognitive reality.