Dolphins Walk on Water in the Wild
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A group of wild dolphins living in waters along the south Australian coast near Adelaide have stunned scientists and researchers, teaching members of the group to walk on their tails — a behavior typically only seen after training in captivity.
Photo Helena Pugsley
‘Tail-walking’ is a trick that dolphins perform using their powerful tails to rise vertically from the water and drive themselves forwards or backwards.
Billie — a female bottlenose dolphin in the group — spent several weeks in captivity at a local dolphinarium in the 1980′s in a rescue effort to recover from malnutrition and sickness after being trapped in a marina lock, and may have seen other dolphins performing tail walking during her short stay.
The scientists studying the group believe that Billie may be teaching the tail-walking — a behavior never before seen in the wild — on to other females in her group as a form of ‘culture.’
Photo Rob Purser
Photo Sloaner Taku
Photo Brian07
“I have observed all the local dolphins over a number of years, and have watched Billie occasionally performing tail-walks in the years since her release, sometimes in the bow wave of large ships, which is an awesome sight!” said Dr. Mike Bossley from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) in Australia, one of the scientists that’s been monitoring the group on the Port River estuary.
“About 5 years ago another female dolphin called Wave began performing the same behavior, but does so with much greater regularity than Billie. A 3rd adult female dolphin has also been seen tail-walking.”
“We can’t for the life of us work out why they do it.” Dr. Bossley added.
The scientists are attempting to figure out whether the behavior might be a form of play or communication, and whether it’s likely other members of the dolphin group will inherit the tail walking talent.
“We’re doing systematic observations now to determine if there’s something that may trigger it, but so far we haven’t found anything.”
“This indicates that they do learn from each other, which is not a surprise really, but it does also seem that they exhibit elements of what in humans we would call ‘cultural’ behavior.” said Dr Bossley.
“These are things that groups develop and are passed between individuals and that come to define those groups, such as language or dancing, and it would seem that among the Port River dolphins we may have an incipient tail-walking culture.”
Rainbow demonstrates his beautiful and powerful tail-walk.
Photo Dolphin Research Center
Photo Kirkrappe
Photo Kerstinbokor
Dolphins have been known to show cultural behavior, something long believed to be a quality unique to humans.
A discovery was made in Australia in May 2005 with a group of Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins depicting this cultural aspect of dolphin behavior to teach their young to use tools. The dolphins break sponges off and cover their snouts with them, thus protecting their snouts while foraging. This knowledge of how to use a tool is mainly transferred from mothers to daughters, unlike simian primates, where the knowledge is generally passed on to both sexes.
The technology to use sponges as mouth protection is not genetically inherited but a taught behavior. A similar cultural behavior was discovered amongst river dolphins in Brazil, where some male dolphins use objects such as weeds and sticks as part of a sexual display.
Photo Happy Tinfoil Cat
Photo Joy of Living
Photo Sheriffdan10
“If tail-walking is a true cultural behavior, it will gradually spread through the local population, probably by being adopted by youngsters.” Dr Bossley said.
“WDCS will maintain its quiet, non-invasive observations of these enigmatic animals and continue to document the behavior of these wild, free dolphins.”
“This behavior by the Adelaide dolphins demonstrates their intelligence and is even more proof that these animals are unsuitable for confinement in captivity, where they are unable to express natural behavior or form normal social groups with other animals.” said Cathy Williamson, anti-captivity campaigner for WDCS.
Play is an important part of dolphins’ lives, and they can be observed playing with seaweed or play-fighting with other dolphins. These beautiful mammals enjoy riding waves, frequently ‘surf’ coastal swells and the bow waves of boats, and they’re also willing to playfully interact with human swimmers on occasion.
Spinner Dolphin. Photo Mila Zinkova
Dolphins have even been witnessed leaping above the water surface performing acrobatic figures such as the Spinner Dolphin — famous for its acrobatic displays in which they will spin longitudinally along their axis as they leap through the air — which has perplexed scientists as to the purpose for the behavior.
Sources: BBC, Telegraph, and Wikipedia
Related stories:
Rare New Species Discovered Dubbed Worlds Ugliest Dolphin
This is pretty cool. It looks like the dolphin that was in captivity has been out showing others how cool a trick it is and has kind of developed a craze out there in wild!
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I am not surprised at all. I am a firm believer in animals’ intelligence and ability to communicate in other forms rather than just “instinctively” As crazy as it sounds, I do believe that animals “think” and make calculated decisions. They learn and teach others too… The most relevant are studies on octopuses and cuttlefish. I’ll try to remember the link and send it to you – a very interesting article that could inspire other such great posts, Deborah.
Dolphins are intelligent, even more than elephants. I here by agree with Mihaela Lica that animals “think” and make calculated decisions. This is well said and immediately caught my eyeballs.
Animal intelligence is something attracts me a lot. We are also trying to spread a message about vegetarianism at our blog with 250+ readers. We have chosen Kabon as an cartoon character who is on mission to spread planet green message across the world, we are still unsure how far it will go, but comments like this highly encourage us to work more on the subject.
Thanks for such a nice collections.
Apologies all around for my late reply, as I’m still working at recovering from surgery, and have limited amounts of energy these days.
Indeed JBO, but what’s really amazing about it is that it takes years of training to learn the feat, and at most, Billie had only been able to witness the trick during her short captivity.
Definitely Mig, and dolphins are one of the most intelligent mammals of all. As far as making ‘calculated’ decisions, the Dolphin Research Center is actually working with them to reveal their ability to discern numbers of items such as rocks. I would love that if you’re able to find that link for me, it would most certainly make for an interesting story. Thank you
I’m with you 100% on the intelligence theory and capacity for many animals being able to think, Amber
[...] Dolphins Walk on Water in the Wild [...]
Linked to your post here:
http://dancingdolphininstitute.blogspot.com/2008/08/dolphins-walking-on-water.html
Excellent post…couldn’t let this one go by without linking!
Wow, that’s so cool. I’ve been re-watching Seaquest (ok, i know, it was a very cheezy show) recently and I’ve found again the love of dolphins that I had when I was a teenager!
aww they look sweet i must praise the trainers of these animals who are wise enough to train an animal who are not really intelligent we can say like a dog
It is interesting to read the behavior of Dolphins. You’ve given a personal touch by letting readers know their names. Great.
I love Spinner Dolphin
Dolphins are so cool.
There are no wounder why so many people dreams about swimming with them.
[...] Or how Billie’s cityfied ways infected the country dolphins. http://www.lifeinthefastlane.ca/dolphins-walk-on-water-in-the-wild/weird-science [...]
That is definitely an interesting read. I can’t believe that the Billie taught the other Dolfins how to tail walk! It’s amazing. Dolphins are such smart animals.
Yeah ex captivity dolphins have been teaching the wild ones new tricks i think, interesting read, thanks for the share.
Great photos! Dolphins are such beautiful and intelligent animals. They seem to have such a playful nature.
I like and love Dolphins since i am small, i think there is not other animal is smarter than dolphin right ?
On a ferry boat today March 10th 2010 between Cebu and Ormoc Philippines saw two pods of Dolphins and in the second pod a Dolphin actually got out of the water and “tail walked”. This is out in the wild amazing. I have been to Sea World many times and seen this with trained Dolphins. My point I think is, what you see at Sea World is just a hyped up version of what thease wonderful creatures already do in the wild. So why do they do it in the wild ?