But wouldn't hat violate the rights of the bears you got the arms from?

I agree on the enterteinment and probably military purposes (but as i stated, all other animals should be protected against that too). But the dolphin's intelligence is what makes the study of his behaviour appealing in the first place. by outlawing the study of dolphins we will probably miss some worthwile knowledge about social evolution.

And the arguments about whaling and fishing are valid, but seen from an ecologic point of view.

I understand that the dolphin and similar intelligent species are closer to human levels of self awareness than most other species and they should, like every other animal, be protected against senseless animal cruelty but i see no reason to place them a step above all other living creatures, at least not yet.

It's all fancy that they are pretty smart for animals, but it's not like they had any major evolutional breakthrough yet, except for gobbling up fish. As far as i know at least.

If you were a dolphin, would you want to change?

They gobble up fish and enjoy sex and just swim around having fun. We have mortgages and cubicles and tax codes. I'm not so sure which is smarter here.

You got a point. well... 'least we don't get caught in a fishnet every now and then, except that still sounds more fun than what you mentioned.

Would this mean we can also throw dolphins into jail? Assault, battery, murder and various other "crimes".

Would acting in a zoo's dolphin show be considered the equivalent of a chain gang or community service?

If they are given the "rights", then they also need to accept the "responsibilities". Can't have it both ways.

All of this Bullshit is simply out of control

Animals should have no rights because they are ANIMALS, do I really need to link the Maddox article here?

For pete's sake, some people are really losing rational thinking with these "Animal rights"

In this regard: The Chinese have my respect

Next thing you know they'll build an underwater country, start their own government, create suits to walk on land and kill us all

so are humans

Technically yes, but they are different nonetheless

I was referring to White Supremacy, which still persists in some forms today. I was a little unclear there but if you did understand me the first time and you happen to believe in the superiority of one race over the other then I welcome your downgrade. But I'm going to assume that you were offended and pointing out that not all Caucasians were ardent believers in their own racial superiority and that's probably true, so if that was your reasoning then I do apologize for being obtuse.

Edit: typo

and according to this study dolphins are different from the other animals too

Actually you can. If you are legally insane you are no longer responsible for your actions. But you still have human rights.

On topic:

There is a very interesting underlying philosophical problem to that discussion. Remember that not to long ago, e.g. Jews and Africans were considered "sub human". In Nazi Germany, murder was still a crime and you couldn't just go around and kill 6 mio people. But murder, by definition requires the killing of a human. But luckily those damn jews were "sub-human" and therefore killing them was not murder. And before that Africans were considered to be only somewhat better apes. Hence you could write a constitution that makes all man free, but not "ape like negros".

Today we luckily know that this was sick and wrong. But the basic question remains and has somewhat shifted. Currently the "hotspots" of this discussion are embryos and brain dead comatose patients. In the future it might be clones are gentically engineered "harvest bodys" for organs.

This is why one must be very careful with saying stuff like "but those obviously aren't humans", because the question shouldn't be "are we giving them rights", but "are we taking rights away from them"

The highest value in the constitution of Germany is "human dignity", it reigns above all. But there is no definition of "human dignity" (or "human" for that matter), because then you would have to draw a line, and whenever you draw a line, there is something "outside" of that line. And that is not allowed to happen (again).

Therefore I'm also very much against applying "human rights" on dolphins, because that might "water down" human rights. And I still think that all humans are still special and different from mamals. And, to be honest, despite everything I've said before, I'm pretty sure I can say "dolphins aren't humans". But that notwithstanding, we should reconsider how we treat those animals in the future.

Soon enough, dolphins will be bitching about full body scans and long lines at the security checkpoint.