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Thursday, 18 September 2008

Talk about smart!

http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/dolphinrings.asp
snopes.com: Dolphin Rings

17 comments:

  1. That is one of the most incredible things I've ever seen.
    Thank you.

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  2. I thought, for a moment, that they were trying to tell us where we'd gone wrong...

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  3. Awesome. As I've never seen this behavior, I take it this is a trick this dolphin learned on its own. Do we know if any of the dolphins it's tanked with can imitate the trick? Maybe this is a dolphin prodigy...

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  4. Somehow, I was imagining the dolphins humming "I was only blowing bubbles..." in unison as they danced through the water. Very cool and surprising.

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  5. In the article they state that this behaviour is common.
    I could be wrong but to me it looks as if they are using their sonar to help shape the rings.

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  6. http://bubblerings.com/bubblerings/faq.cfm
    Bunch of info about bubble rings, and how to make them, from a guy who's invented a device to do it. There's also some cool video, including a huge bubble ring from a whale.

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  7. On some nature show, I think I heard that whales use this method to corrale fish and plankton into a managable mass during feeding.

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  8. There's a video of a Beluga whale doing something similar in Japan IIRC*.I'll go look.

    Here

    * Though maybe without the reshaping stuff.

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  9. What climbing a fence to get out of a garden shed?

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  10. I've seen the corraling trick on TV shows - a pack (pod?) of dolphins create a circular wall of bubbles around a school of prey fish.

    No doubt that dolphins are way smart. If we ever figure out the brain transference thing, I'd love to be a dolphin. Or maybe a whale. At least for a while.

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  11. Not sure what this had to do with bubble rings, Andrew, but have to admit that may be one of the most clever (and committed) dogs I've ever seen. I especially thought that the last scene where the other pups gather at the still closed gate to wave goodbye was poignantly cute. Funny stuff!

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  12. Dogfish? - No, nothing to do with porpoises / whales etc... I just had to post it somewhere!

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