Dolphins often seem to want to befriend us
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
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.
Let's rephrase it to be "pretty much the pinnacle of the food chain".
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.
Now if you mean hominids, no, for most of our history he've been prey. Even for a while after the Homo gender appeared.
> 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?'
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
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?"
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 think yes. How many (untrained) animals out there are known to protect a human in danger ? To my knowledge there are only dogs and dolphins.
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.
IIRC their high glia/neuron ratio is though to be an adaptation to sea life.
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."
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.
So cool! One of my favorite art pieces! http://greg.org/archive/2010/06/01/cue_the_dolphin_embassy.h...
>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.
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.
This greatly restricts their over-all range.
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.
Edit: sorry, I didn't mean to sound too critical.
So does it matter whether dolphins actually seek us out? I just get a kick out of thinking they do, and this article put a smile on my face.
@dang
Much respect for your moderation and even keeled interactions. I can learn a lot by it.
(this won't be a recurring theme or anything, just giving you props and fading back into the crowd)
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.
Domesticated species evolve by artificial selection/selective breeding not by natural selection.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Domesticated_Red_Fox (evidence for genetic influence on "friendliness")
Edit: somewhat irrelevant to the point above, but interesting anyway
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".