Dolphin Helped Beached Whale by Giving Them a Good Talking-To.

Two pygmy sperm whales had repeatedly beached themselves on Mahia beach in New Zealand and conservationists had trouble trying to get them back out to sea.

That is, until Moko the bottlenosed dolphin, who is well known locally for playing with swimmers in the bay, stepped in (swam in?):

Mr Smith said that just when his team was flagging, the dolphin showed up and made straight for them.

"I don’t speak whale and I don’t speak dolphin," Mr Smith told the BBC, "but there was obviously something that went on because the two whales changed their attitude from being quite distressed to following the dolphin quite willingly and directly along the beach and straight out to sea."

He added: "The dolphin did what we had failed to do. It was all over in a matter of minutes."

Link - Thanks kyax!

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Posted on

March 15, 2008 at 2:01 am by Alex
Category: Animal

9 comments to "Dolphin Helped Beached Whale by Giving Them a Good Talking-To."

Shay
March 15th, 2008 at 5:57 am
We humans are such busybodies acting like these animals don’t know their fins from their blow holes. Nature rights itself, eventually.
Neslock
March 15th, 2008 at 7:52 am
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Matt
March 15th, 2008 at 8:39 am
And here is another case for an animal having a soul. Take that Catholics!!!
AndyS
March 15th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Sounds like Douglas Adams more right than you might have thought
Lindsey
March 15th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
there’s a good take on this at Discover Magazine’s blog: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2008/03/12/dolphin-saves-b eached-whales-using-language-of-the-sea/
emptyminded
March 15th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
I can hear the dolphins now: “Hey, don’t you idiots know that humans dump their raw sewage onto their beaches? What are you trying to do, get pissed on? For God’s sake, get away from there and go clean off in deep water. What a coulple of meat-heads…”
Moon
March 15th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I speak whale!!!

“FOllllllllllooooooowwwwwwWWWWWWWW, meeEEEEEEEEEEE, WWWWWHHHHHhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllllles!”
ElSmiley
March 17th, 2008 at 10:25 am
I doubt the veracity of this tale.
ted
March 17th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Probably the dolphins sensed the distress, made noises, and the whales followed the familiar noise back into the sea.
It doesn’t automatically denote any intelligence, motivation, or purpose in their apparent “communication”.

It certainly doesn’t prove the existence of a soul, which is something highly-debated even among us sentient humans.

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