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High-stakes international negotiations in Morocco over the future of whaling collapsed this week, with anti-whaling nations like Argentina unwilling to accept compromise proposals that Japan reduce, but not eliminate, its killing of whales in Antarctic and Pacific waters.

That this latest meeting of the International Whaling Commission produced a stalemate is hardly surprising. For years, the commission’s 88 member nations have been split along an ideological divide no less profound than the one over abortion in the United States.

Pro-whaling nations like Japan, Norway and Iceland say that opposition to modern-day whaling is illogical, as the species of whales being hunted are no longer endangered. “Japan supports the realization of the management, conservation and sustainable utilization of whale resources based on the best scientific information available,” that country said in its opening statement at the Morocco meeting.

But for many whaling foes, the legitimacy of the practice hinges not on whether populations are sustainable enough to allow selective hunting, but on whether whales, like higher primates including chimpanzees or gorillas, are too intelligent and evolved to be hunted at all.

“It’s kind of a dichotomy between those who see whales as resources and those who see whales as beings,” said Hal Whitehead, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who studies sperm whales in the wild.

Proponents of whaling have argued for years that evidence of cetacean intelligence is weak and overstated. The Japanese Whaling Association, a pro-whaling lobbying group, states at its Web site that “those who assert that the whale has a higher intelligence base their assertion on the large size of a whale’s brain. It is simply natural for a whale, which has a large head, to have a larger brain than those of other animals, but that does not necessarily mean that it has higher intelligence.”

Yet arguments about brain size and cetacean intelligence have fallen to the wayside in recent years, with experiments in captivity showing that dolphins can grasp basic language and math skills, understand concepts of imitation and improvisation, and succeed in self-awareness tests previously passed only by humans and primates.

Whale and dolphin research in the wild ocean has also had breakthroughs. Dolphins have been shown to divide themselves into societies, forming complex alliances to compete and fight against other dolphin groups. And preliminary research shows whales distinguishing themselves geographically through variations in their famous vocalizations – the human equivalent of accents and dialects.

“We are finding things that we had to invoke culture to explain,” Dr. Whitehead said.

Growing appreciation for the complexity of whale behavior helped propel the opposition that sank the Morocco negotiations, despite early signs that a deal might be at hand.

Before the conference began, Japan stated that it was open to substantial compromises, including reduced quotas, the placement of international observers onboard whaling vessels, the deployment of satellite tracking systems and the monitoring of whale meat marketing using DNA fingerprinting. But such a compromise, which would have reauthorized commercial whaling for the first time in 30 years, was a no-go for too many nations.

Without a deal, Japan has pledged to continue killing whales in the name of scientific research, as it has done since the commercial ban went into effect in 1986.

The country’s research is continuing and considerable, but perhaps unsurprisingly includes little investigation into whale intelligence. The Web site for Japan’s foremost whale research lab, the Institute for Cetacean Research, lists hundreds of papers in “peer-reviewed journals” but none on cetacean behavior, social structure or communication.

A few of the institute’s published research papers seem destined to raise the hackles of anti-whaling activists, who call the institute a front for illegal commercial whaling. One study from 2008, for instance, is titled “Comparative Experiment of Whaling Grenades in the Japanese Whale Research Program.” The study examined the effectiveness of Japanese and Norwegian explosive harpoons “in order to improve the method of whale killing.”

The study describes testing two weapons on live whales, after which researchers determined that they were both equally effective. “As there is not much difference in actual performance between the two, the lower price of the Japanese grenade may be an important factor in selecting future whaling devices,” the study concludes.