Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much . . . the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons.

This line appears in Douglas Adams’s comic science-fiction novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979), during the early Earth-set chapters that culminate in the planet’s sudden demolition by the Vogons. Adams frames the impending catastrophe with mock-anthropological asides about human self-importance and misread “signs” from other species. The dolphins—portrayed as clever, playful, and possibly more perceptive than humans—are said to have long tried to warn humanity, only to be misunderstood as mere entertainers. The passage sets up the later gag that dolphins depart Earth just before its destruction, leaving a farewell message that humans also fail to interpret correctly.

Adams satirizes the way intelligence gets defined by a culture’s own achievements and values. Humans cite technology, cities, and even warfare as evidence of superiority, while dolphins—judging by enjoyment, ease, and perhaps wisdom—reach the opposite conclusion. The joke exposes how “progress” can be a parochial metric: what looks like advancement from one perspective can look like needless complication or self-harm from another. By pairing “the wheel” with “New York” and “wars,” Adams also needles the assumption that complexity and dominance equal intelligence, suggesting that a truly intelligent species might prioritize play, balance, or survival over conquest and monument-building.