My first real interaction with dolphins was sailing around the UK on a tall ship (STS Malcolm Miller) about 25 years ago.
As we sailed around Land's End, a pod of dolphins started playing around the boat. I want on watch, so I lay face down in the net below the bowsprit and watched them play for over an hour.
They were like surfers lining up at a breach break. There were rules. Each took their turn to ride the waves coming off the front of the ship. They were having fun. They had the time to just enjoy themselves. You could imagine one saying to the other, "gnarly dude. That drop in was sweet! You owned that wave".
At that point I saw the similarity between humans and dolphins. They are at the top of their food chain and food is plentiful. They don't have to spend the entire day hunting and eating like so many other animals. So this gives them time. Time to learn, time to play and time to socialise.
True, but but the great white shark is also hunted by killer whales, but I think you would probably consider the great white shark to be at the to of the food chain. Humans don't fair too well against a number of large predators either all things being equal.
Let's rephrase it to be "pretty much the pinnacle of the food chain".
Asimov wrote an article about that myth - that humans were some poor vulnerable mammal through history, using its wits to survive against apex predators.
Turns out, through history, humans were apex predators. We don't live in the ocean; sharks and whales are not preying upon us. In other ecosystems, humans rarely if ever met other apex predators. We were the top of the heap historically in almost every environment we occupied. Pretty much.
That said, I remember reading recently about 6 or 8 human skeletons being found in a saber-toothed tiger den, 80,000 years old, being excavated somewhere.
> Except for humans (discussed below), dolphins have few natural enemies. Some species or specific populations have none, making them apex predators. For most of the smaller species of dolphins, only a few of the larger sharks, such as the bull shark, dusky shark, tiger shark and great white shark, are a potential risk, especially for calves.[117] Some of the larger dolphin species, especially orcas (killer whales), may also prey on smaller dolphins, but this seems rare.
Thus, the answer to 'Are dolphins on the top of the food chain?' is 'which species of dolphin?'
I've spent most of my life in the ocean as a scuba diver/surfer and have encountered dolphins many times. They're just like humans in terms of personality. Some are cool, some are jerks. For example, I was surfing alone on the north side of a jetty and there was a pod that was swimming close by. One of them started slapping it's tail at the surface. This is a sign of aggression so I got out of the water and moved to another spot. Another time I was surfing about 200 yards north of a pier with one other person. We were circled by a dolphin that seemed quite playful that suddenly bumped the back of my board and then jumped out of the water over me. I've had another jump over me when I was paddling toward the wave and it was riding through it as they have been observed doing many times. If there is a juvenile with a pod I definitely keep my distance. Mama dolphin does not want to be friends with any human that comes near her baby. Quite the contrary, they will get very aggressive to protect their young. Additionally, I have seen my share of sharks and pinnipeds. Just last week a pinniped surfaced next to me and then came at me and grabbed my surfboard leash. Of course, I let out a little shriek since I wasn't expecting it but it quickly let go. I've had them follow me more than once. They've swam alongside me as I was paddling out and have surfaced right in front of me. I've had juvenile white sharks (4-5 feet) swim by curiously as well. Many of these encounters can be taken as the animal wanting "to be my friend". By the way, orcas are actually more a dolphin than a whale as they are in the Delphinidae family.
The story of the Killer Whales of Eden, Australia was interesting. These killer whales hunted their prey with the humans, shared the loot and the killer whales even protected a human if they fell into the water.
There's an old documentary called For the Love of Dolphins, with stories about attempts at human-dolphin communication, https://youtube.com/watch?v=UDAmktAAcno
Once I was body surfing in waves on the east coast of Australia and had dolphins suddenly appear and ride the same wave. I doubt they get fed that close to shore, so to put their riding down to anything apart from fun would be a challenge. Lovely animals.
Indeed they are. Here in the states it is against the law to feed them or even approach them according to the Marine Mammal Protection act although I've witnessed people ignoring this. I have seen them follow bait balls close in to shore.
If dolphins were land mammals, would we be as fascinated by this type of cross-species social behavior?
Dolphins are certainly interesting, but if I were to worry myself with the plight of a hyper-intelligent mammal species right now, I'd put that energy towards concern for elephants instead. They are an intelligent species that is actually smarter than humans in some aspects and being systematically slaughtered by poachers every day. Dolphin propeller strikes are sad, but potential elephant extinction is a crisis
And orcas have vastly greater social intelligence than humans, but that doesn't stop humans from separating mother from calf at birth.
Don't get the point of this article. "We slaughter billions of cows, but walk up to one, look it in the eyes, and they clearly are saying, to any human, 'Can I be your friend, human?' What gives?"
Maybe the news should be, "Animals. So Smart and Friendly, but We Just Can't Stop Killing Them. What Gives?"
> Don't get the point of this article. "We slaughter billions of cows, but walk up to one, look it in the eyes, and they clearly are saying, to any human, 'Can I be your friend, human?' What gives?"
Having spent a good deal of time around cattle, this is absolutely not the case. They're some of the dumbest animals I've ever owned. They do seem emotional, though - they often seem sort of sad, and are easily paniced.
The smartest farm animal I've been around are hogs. They're mean, too.
I have a friend who's taught his potbelly pigs to count, and also certain tasks like putting away groups of objects when asked. Things I've never seen a dog do. If pigs were less grumpy and less tasty, I imagine people would see them very differently
Link to source? As far as I know for animals only immune system related genetic memory is possible and your example seems to be extremely prone to misinterpretation. Either way, this doesn't say anything about elephants' intelligence.
This is culture transmission, not genetic memory. Whales have the same problem and the same solutions. The grandmothers are very important in both societies.
Well, the total extinction of all native elephants was happened before once at least. In Europe, with most of the big fauna's level, big felines, eurasiatic black bears, european rhinos, european giraffes... it was a crisis for sure. The same problem as in Africa in 2015.
But this never was a question about how many clever or beauty in fact. Dolphins are much more important for us, because there are millions of humans that find their main diet in the sea. Top predators keep the diseases and predators of our food at strict control.
Wolves can adopt children in fact, specially when the children cry; and gorillas seem to be inclined to do this also with human childrens in danger or injured, either the children moves or not. Female gorillas in zoos have been helping boys accidentally falling or entering in the gorilla recint and returning them to the mother. Silverbacks can participate also.
You can google around for "[X animal] protects human" to find plenty of stories of apes, bears, lions, cows, elephants, even birds that have been documented. And thats just in recent english language sources - without taking into account foreign news, historic records, oral histories etc.
Incredibly intelligent and they have long memories. If memory serves me well, there was an example of an octopus remembering a person after 12 years of not seeing them.
They escape their aquariums. They squirt water at people they don't like. They need to be given their food in puzzle boxes to keep them from getting bored. And finally there is over that could apparently determine which team would won world cup football matches. OK the last one is a home, but you get my drift!
"Octopuses have a relatively short life expectancy, with some species living for as little as six months. Larger species, such as the giant pacific octopus, may live for up to five years under suitable circumstances. However, reproduction is a cause of death: males can live for only a few months after mating, and females die shortly after their eggs hatch."
Dolphins are smart like dolphins. They do not have hands as we have, they have a language really complex, cant talk each other being a several km of distance without any gadget, can voluntarily decide to stop to breath (and move the blood only to the vital organs for a half hour or more), and can "see" perfectly in the dark. Not comparable intelligences.
Do you have a source for this? Also, what primates exactly do you mean? There are huge differences of smart within the primate category, e.g. monkeys vs humans.
Humans actually. "The brain to body mass ratio in some members of the odontocete superfamily Delphinoidea is second only to modern humans, and greater than all other mammals"
The Dolphin Embassy was a project by Berkeley art collective Ant Farm. It's mission was to develop dolphin/human relations through the creation of a common language and a mobile laboratory. The project received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and was shown at SFMOMA.
Ant Farm is considered significant as the first studio practice to incorporate new media in its work. Thematically it looks like they were focused on the confluence of new technology, utopian optimism and psychedelic drugs.
Iterations of the designs for the Dolphin Embassy continued into the early 2000s with a proposal for a space craft that would act as a joint dolphin-human space colony and would contain a massive, free floating sphere of water that would be ultra sonically stabilized.
The following is something often repeated that doesn't make sense to me:
>Of course we'll find them among us: they have nowhere else to go.
The ocean makes up a majority of this planet and a tiny fraction of it is within 20 miles of any land where most of the human activity is. Other than major shipping routes, they have the rest to go without encountering people. I don't know where the impression comes from that we are crowding them out.
Just like on land, not all parts of the ocean are equal.
There are regions teaming with life, but there are also regions that are barren and life less, just like the deserts found on land. It all comes down to winds and currents as to which is which.
Now the problem is, humans, like the dolphins don't want those desert parts of the ocean.
Coastal dolphins, which are genetically distinct from offshore dolphins, have evolved to live in coastal waters. Their bodies are not adapted to cold waters or deep diving. They really don't have "the rest" of the ocean to live in.
To contrast dolphins, there are huge swaths of the land mass of the world with almost no human population, and we seem to gather in certain spots for certain reasons, most life does this, so it's not just a matter of the total volume of the ocean vs the entire population of dolphins.
yeah, not perfect, probably constrained to a specific species/subspecies, sorry about that, general point I was trying to make is that the range is not as vast as the ocean volume :)
I imagine some of it has to do with availability of adequate food, ocean temperatures (and how that affects both of the other points), mating "grounds", and so on?
Humans have been hunting in the ocean for centuries, today we dominate it to a degree that we're affecting world fisheries to an enormous extent. Dolphins are going to be where the fish are, they have to be in order to live, humans are going to be there too.
I skimmed this. Does the author actually make any point or come to a conclusion other than offering anecdotes about how dolphins seem pretty friendly to people?
Even if she doesn't this is still a very interesting read. Many of her anecdotes have been seen and confirmed by so many different people that they are undoubtedly true. And considering these are true, they are very unusual and interesting to hear.
I am not aware of any other wild animal that behaves like this. Both in terms of friendliness, and in terms of intelligence as in knowing what people like and how and when to help us.
Obviously you cannot include domesticated animals, such as dogs or cows in this. These animals have been domesticated for so long, they must certainly have obtained some human friendly genes through natural selection. Even a "wild" dog carries genes that are the result of thousands of years of domestication.
But a dolphin has no natural selection reason to be friendly to humans. And given how cruel nature is, and how cruel humans often are, it is rather amazing, they display such inter species friendliness.
It's an interesting idea - natural selection not by death before breeding, but by emigration - if only the animals that liked humans stayed near them, and those that didn't went elsewhere, then they'd end up breeding with other "friendly" individuals and you'd have genetic selection pressure that would amount to natural selection.
No, the author doesn't. On the other hand, you can quickly arrive at most of the same conclusion if you've spent extended time with dolphins.
I always chuckle when I'm told the Marine Mammal Protection act prohibits pursuit of dolphins. It is usually me who is being pursued. During one fishing trip we had 3 dolphins simply show up and start following us. When we would move fishing spots, even 20 miles or more away, they'd still catch up to us. Their cruise speed isn't very high, it is probably around 12 mph. Once at the fishing spot they'd dive and start scaring the fish. Many fish will bite defensively, so this is great when you are fishing with a hook and line. Any fish we couldn't legally keep we'd throw back, which the dolphins would immediately consume. They'd be right beside the boat looking at us as we removed the hook from the mouth of the fish.
Dolphins are pretty obviously intelligent enough to understand what is going on in the sea. Non-mammals in the sea react to a very basic set of cues to take action. A shark can easily be confused with a quick clap on the water surface. I've also watched sharks eat metallic items, which is flat out stupid. I'm willing to bet an octopus has some significant intelligence behind it, mostly because I've never seen one get caught on a hook. This means they are smart enough to avoid them.
I've never dealt with aggression from dolphins.
That said, dolphins aren't going to pull up a chair and debate the merits of presidential candidates. When someone speaks of a dolphin "mourning" for another dead dolphin, I think we are just inserting what we expect a dolphin to feel. The dolphin could just as easily be confused by another dead dolphin.
I've also seen what I can only call a dolphin "party". I came upon a huge group of dolphins, at least 60 or more. There were many species present. I was convinced there was a huge school of fish nearby they were feeding on. Nope, the dolphins were just hanging out. As we stopped the boat they just started jumping over the bow as if to say "Thanks for joining us".
As we sailed around Land's End, a pod of dolphins started playing around the boat. I want on watch, so I lay face down in the net below the bowsprit and watched them play for over an hour.
They were like surfers lining up at a breach break. There were rules. Each took their turn to ride the waves coming off the front of the ship. They were having fun. They had the time to just enjoy themselves. You could imagine one saying to the other, "gnarly dude. That drop in was sweet! You owned that wave".
At that point I saw the similarity between humans and dolphins. They are at the top of their food chain and food is plentiful. They don't have to spend the entire day hunting and eating like so many other animals. So this gives them time. Time to learn, time to play and time to socialise.
Awesome animals.