LSM1303 Animal Behaviour Student Blog : bottlenose dolphins

"Dolphin makes a WHALE of a lifeguard!"

BAVANI PILLAI — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 02:18:00 GMT

Size apparently does not matter in this fascinating story where Moko a bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) saves a sperm whale and her calf from being stranded along the Mahia Beach (New Zealand). This intelligent creature was able to accomplish what rescue workers were trying to do for hours- in minutes.

" 'Moko just came flying through the water and pushed in between us and the whales," Juanita Symes, another rescuer, told the Associated Press. "She got them to head toward the hill, where the channel is. It was an amazing experience.' "

Known for their altruistic nature, dolphins are infamous for protecting people lost at sea and even saving other animals. Their curved mouths give the impression of a friendly permanent smile and are social animals who travel in groups and communicate with each other through a complex system of squeaks and whistles. I wonder if they are able to communicate with other species of animals as well?

" "But it's the first time I've heard of an inter-species refloating technique. I think that's wonderful," said van Helden, who was not involved in the rescue but spoke afterward to Smith."

If Dolphins are intelligent enough to pick up on human sign language to perform complex tricks, I wonder if they are able to pick on other types of communication as well...

Dolphins track their prey through the expert use of echolocation. They hunt in groups and are known for their inventive hunting strategies as well. The following video is one such example where dolphins strategically hunt together for fishes...enjoy!

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/animals/mammals-animals/dolphins-and-porpoises/dolphin_bottlenose_beachingfish.html

Related to their innovative hunting strategies, the article 'Site of Human partnership becomes protected area', is an example of a mutually beneficial partneship between dolphins and the fishermen in Myanmar which goes towards protecting the dolphins around the Ayeyarwady River as well.

'The fascinating partnership involves fishermen summoning the dolphins to voluntarily herd schools of fish toward the boats and awaiting nets. With the aid of the river-dwelling dolphins, the fishermen can increase the size of their catches by threefold, and the dolphins appear to benefit by more easily preying on the cornered fish in both nets and on the muddy banks of the river.'

Dolphins have never ceased to amaze me with their human-like intelligence that makes it all the more diffcult not to be anthropomorphic when describing them. I had the opportunity to view dolphins in the wild when on a cruise boat in New Zealand. The memories of these playful creatures as they swam alongside our boat are definitely precious as I've grown to respect and learn more about them. This video is similar to what I experienced...

References:

1) http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/bottlenose-dolphin.html?nav=A-Z (March 17th 2008)

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottlenose_dolphins (March 21st 2008)

3) 'Site Of Human-dolphin Partnership Becomes Protected Area', ScienceDaily (Jun. 23, 2006)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060623100318.htm (March 21st 2008)

Interspecies Altruism Between Dolphins and Whales

KUM JING SHEN JOEY — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:24:00 GMT

In the National Geographic Website, the article " Dolphin Saves Stuck Whales, Guides Them Back to Sea" made me ponder the reasons behind such behavior. The article is heart warming, intriguing and also relatable but does not provide convincing scientific explanations for the dolphin's behavior. In examining this article, I will attempt to explain anthropomorphism as a narrative technique and more importantly, account for the dolphins unusual behaviour by using the concepts of evolution, imprinting and also learning.

The main animal in question is the Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) which rescues a stranded Sperm Whale (Physeter macrocephalus) .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottlenose_dolphins

Below are interesting excerpts from the article which can be found in the link above.

"Moko just came flying through the water and pushed in between us and the whales," Juanita Symes, another rescuer, told the Associated Press. "She got them to head toward the hill, where the channel is. It was an amazing experience."

Anton van Helden, a marine mammals expert at New Zealand's national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa, said the reports of Moko's rescue were "fantastic" but believable because dolphins have "a great capacity for altruistic activities."

There's evidence of dolphins protecting people lost at sea, and the swimmers are known for their playfulness with other animals.

"But it's the first time I've heard of an inter-species refloating technique. I think that's wonderful," said van Helden, who was not involved in the rescue but spoke afterward to Smith.

While reading this article, emotions of admiration, surprise and a "heart-warming" feeling arose possibly as a result of the manner of reporting. In a recent tutorial, the concept of Anthropomorphism would seem appropriate to explain for the invocation of such affects in the reader. Anthropomorphism is described as "the attribution of human characteristics to non-human animals, most commonly by supposing non-human behaviour to be motivated by human emotion that might motivate superficially similar human behaviour." Though the manner of reporting is effective and informative, it does not provide satisfactory answers to explain the behaviour of the dolphin. In another article "Myth, metaphor and hypothesis: how anthropomorphism defeats science" by Lucy G. Sullivan, she states that "Because of our natural tendency to interpret the world in the light of human experience, language expressing this viewpoint comes most readily to our tongue." My intention however is not to discredit the article, but to highlight human tendency towards describing animal behaviour by borrowing means of representation from human behaviour. This would then serve as a launching point to introduce another set of articles that would better explain the dolphin’s behaviour as a student of animal behaviour.

In another related article on the same incident titled "Why species give each other a helping hand", a more scientific attempt was made to explain the dolphin's behaviour through the concept of imprinting. An interesting observation I made is that the writer of the article could be the same author of "An Introduction to Animal Behaviour", a supplementary reading of this course.

"By and large, adult animals rarely do anything unless there is something in it for them. When they do, however, it's generally because something has gone awry with their sense of self."

"Many scientists will tell you that faulty imprinting lies behind all apparent examples of inter-species co-operation. It may well be that with Moko the dolphin it was a case of mistaken identity."

The reason provided for this instance of interspecies cooperation is possibly a result of faulty imprinting. Imprinting according to our suggested supplementary reading is a difficult term to pin down but provided for a tentative definition as "various behavioural changes whereby a young animal becomes attached to a 'mother figure' or a future mating partner." It is possible, as suggested by the author that "It may be that Moko actually mistook the whales for dolphins". Thus this explanation makes this unusual occurrence of interspecies cooperation more fitting when considering the altruistic behaviour as an adaptive behaviour in light of the theory of evolution. By reading the dolphin's action as an act of mistaken intraspecies altruism, there are many instances of seemingly altruistic intraspecies behaviour such as cooperative breeding in birds, cooperative acts in primate groups and the cooperative nature of other animal groups that occur as a result of reciprocity and self benefit. This is further substantiated in another article which states the need "To account for the manifest existence of cooperation and related group behavior such as altruism and restraint in competition, evolutionary theory has recently acquired two kinds of extension. These extensions are, broadly, genetical kinship theory and reciprocation theory."

In conclusion, anthropomorphism as a narrative technique makes articles on animal behaviour more relatable and more easily identifiable with the masses. However, a more scientific approach is necessary when attempting to explain animal behaviour. The second article thus provides for a more satisfactory and scientific interpretation of the dolphin's behaviour, using theories of imprinting and evolution to account for this unusual phenomenon.

References:

1."Dolphin Saves Stuck Whales, Guides Them Back to Sea" by Ray Lilley. Nationalgeographic.com, 12^thMarch 2008.

2. Lucy G. Sullivan Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, Vol. 349, No. 1328 (Aug. 29, 1995), pp. 215-218

3. Manning, Aubrey and Dawkins, Marian Stamp, An Introduction to Animal Behaviour 5th Edition, Cambridge University Press (1998)

4. Robert Axelrod; William D. Hamilton The Evolution of Cooperation: Science, New Series, Vol. 211, No. 4489. (Mar. 27, 1981), pp. 1390-1396.

5."Why species give each other a helping hand" by Aubrey Manning. Dailymail.co.uk, 13^th March 2008

Spongebob, Friend of the Bottlenose Dolphin?

CHAN TIEN FOONG BRYAN — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 06:05:00 GMT

When we humans use chemicals, when we harvest durians, or play baseball, what do these activities have in common? yes you've guessed it, we use gloves when we indulge in the following activities. What is its purpose?..To protect ourselves from harm of course.

We humans are not the only ones who use tools in our everyday life. The woodpecker finch uses twigs to draw out grubs from within logs, whilst our cousins, the chimpanzee, uses similar tools to fish out termites in a termite nest. How about in the sea then? This blog introduces another similar example, but it is based in the sea. This particular sea creature uses tools when foraging for food. It is less surprising, though, to learn that the innovative tool-using behavior belongs to our intelligent friends, the bottle nose dolphin (Tursiops Truncatus).

"Sometimes, when a dolphin in Shark Bay, off the coast of Western Australia, prepares to forage, she drops to the sea floor, rips a fat conical chunk of sea sponge out of it, covers her beak with the sponge cone and sets to work. After she finds the fish she wants, she drops the sponge. "Sponging," as the scientists at the Shark Bay Dolphin Research Project call this behavior, is an unusual instance of an animal using another animal as a tool, but that is not what makes the sponging interesting to biologists." (Retica, 2005).

The interesting thing about this behavior is not simply that dolphins use the sea sponge like a glove (since we know bottlenose dolphins to be extremely clever). It interests scientists more that this tool-using behavior does not have any genetic explaination, but is something that is picked up from their mothers (Krutzen, 2005).

The presence of culture within animal societies is something that is interesting and has been widely debated. In this example though, the use of tools "is almost exclusively limited to a single matriline that is part of a large albeit social network of frequently interacting individuals, adding a new dimension to charting cultural phenomena among animals" (Krutzen, 2005).

If this is indeed a case of culture among animals, there is every possibility that other dolphins could watch and learn, similar to a spread of culture in human terms. If such, we may see a great drop in sea sponges. Spongebob it seems, have lots to worry about!

Citations:
1) Dolphin culture by Retica, Aaron. The New York Times. Published 11 December 2005.
2) Krutzen, M., Mann. J., Heithaus, M. R., Connor, R. C., Bejder, L., & Sherwin, W. B. (June, 2005) Cultural transmission of tool use in bottlenose dolphins. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences. 102(25), 8939-8943.

Links:
3)Cultures in Chimpanzees

Bottlenose dolphin: life savers and guardian angel ??

YEOW YILING LYANA — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:55:00 GMT

Bottlenose dolphins are the most common breed of dolphins used in aquarium shows due to its intelligence, charismatic 'smile' (due to its curved mouth) and friendly character. It ability to perform many tricks has gained the hearts of many people especially children.

Furthermore, there has been many incidences whereby humans were rescued by bottlenose dolphines (the most recent one was when a surfer was rescued by a pod of bottlenose dolphins from a shark), and thus they gain the title of 'men's best friend in the sea'.

Interestingly, the bottlenose dolphin now rescues whales too!!

On March 13th 2008, a bottlenose dolphin, named moko, rescued 2 pygmy sperm whales stranded in the New Zealand beach. Conservation workers tried to save thw whales but to no avail. But moko managed to communicate with the distressed whales, leading them out into the open sea. As mentioned, moko is a famous dolphin among the locals as it interacts with those at the beach. so it seems like moko is not only a playmate for the kids, but also their guardian angel.

3 interesting points I want to highlight:

1) bottlenose dolphins do not mix together with the pygmy sperm whale. They are usually seen interacting and travelling together with the Pilot Whale.

2) It saves 2 whales! It is impressive to know that they often save distress humans, but now it spreads its helpfulness and righteousness to the whales!

3) The 2 pygmy sperm whales were willing to allow moko to lead them out. It comes to question that dolphins and whales communicate using their 'whale language' ? (eg. the whistling sound)

The Bottlenose dolphins are often seen interacting in mixed-species groups, most commonly with the pilot whales, pantropical spotted dolphins and spinner dolphins. Occassionally, when the 2 pods of bottlenose dolphins and pilot whales interact, they became more active, playing and surfing on ocean swells. The Pilot whale is divided into the short finned and long finned species, displaying in similar interlligence as the bottlenose dolphin.

Several years ago, a group of mix bottlenose dolphins and pilot whales were spotted being together with a group of Sperm Whales. The sperm whales were observed to be behaving unusually. The group of bottlenose dolphins and pilot whales accompanied them thru-out. Although what was happening was unknown, it seems that the dolphins were trying to protect and accompany the sperm whales... (more)

As quoted from a website "Bottlenose dolphins may aid ill or injured pod mates. They may stand by and vocalize, or they may physically support the animal at the surface so it can breathe". Therefore, this may suggests why they will help those in need, irregardless whether they are humans or other cetaceans.

So it seems like the bottlenose dolphins not only are friendly cetaceans, within them, they have a sense of helping those in need!

References

"Bottlenose Dolphin" Last modified: Thursday September 24th, 1999 http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jaap/tursiops.htm

"Dolphin's Encyclopedia: know the short finned Pilot whale" http://www.t-d-e.org/knowshort_finnedpilot.php

"American Cetacean Society Fact Sheet: Pilot whale" http://www.acsonline.org/factpack/PilotWhale.htm

SeaWorld/Busch Gardens Animal Information Database http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Bottlenose/behavdol.html

"Dead Baby Pilot Whale" by Katharina Heyer on September 5, 2003 http://www.firmm.org/en/aktuelles/news/030905-grindwal.html

Image source

http://www.hitech-dolphin.com/image-files/information-on-bottlenose-480.jpg

Video Source

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp_motddvnQ

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080313-dolphin-video-ap.html