Nobody has come up with a way to test whale intelligence yet. The normal intelligence tests involve putting the animal in a maze and testing it's ability to navigate through mazes of various complexity. Nobody has yet been willing to put forth the money to build a several kilometer square maze for testing whales.

It would suprise me if whales where as stupid as cows, as we have intentionally domesticated as much intelligence out of cows as we can. But it wouldn't surprise me if they where not that much smarter. Unlike dolphins, whales are largly passive grazers that depend on size to make them immmune to most predators. This is generally the least intelligent category of animal. But whales are also so far outside the normal curve that judgement based on regular animals is of marginal value.

Jay