“Conching” is a method by which Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins are trapping small fish in conch shells, bringing the shells to the surface, and then shaking them with their rostrums to clear out the water and dump the fish into their mouths. More remarkably, the trend appears to be spreading throughout an entire population of dolphins, and fast.

The first isolated instances of conching were recorded in 2007 and 2009 among a small group of Shark Bay’s dolphins. But other dolphins seem to be observing that behavior and learning the method for themselves–in the last four months alone, researchers have documented the behavior six or seven times–marking a very rapid horizontal spread of behavior.

Link via Popular Science

In the comic book series X-Men, Wolverine has a supernatural ability to heal. But Stan Lee and Jack Kirby might've picked the wrong name for the guy: it should've been Dolphin.

See, scientists have discovered the reason why dolphins are very hard to kill: they seem to have a miraculous healing power that let them survive what would seem to be lethal injuries, just like

Michael Zasloff has published a letter in the July 21 issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, in which he recounts several documented incidents of serious injuries to dolphins, presumably inflicted by sharks. These bites, some larger than a basketball, healed in weeks without leaving the dolphins disfigured, without causing them apparent pain, and without becoming visibly infected.

"If I saw this in a human being, I wouldn't believe it," Zasloff said. "It should awe us. You have an animal that has evolved in the ocean without hands or legs, which swims faster than we can, has intelligence that perhaps equals our social and emotional complexity, and its healing is almost alien compared to what we are capable of."

LiveScience explains the secret behind dolphin's miraculous healing power: Link (Photo: Trevor Hassard, Tangalooma Resort)

Dolphins who suffer shark bites seem to feel very little pain, and they’re resistant to infection and hemorrhaging. Plus when they heal, the contours of their bodies return almost to normal, even though other animals would have huge, malformed scars.

Link

We’re big on unusual and beautiful aquatica around here at Neatorama, and today is no different. The pink dolphin of South America is an interesting creature–it lacks the dorsal fin of its more familiar bottle-nosed cousin, and has unfused neck vertebrae, allowing it to make a quick 180º turn from predators. You can see their pink coloring is mottled, with each dolphin sporting its own pattern of pink and grey. Check out more pics and lots of info about the Amazon River Dolphin on the Ark in Space. Link

Image: Joachim S Muller

Have you ever wanted to have a conversation with your dog or cat? The bad news is that communications with house pets may never be possible, but researchers at the Wild Dolphin Project founded by Denise Herzing have made steps to one day having a device that will be able to translate dolphin noises allowing humans to communicate with another species.

For the next phase in learning dolphin-speak Herzing is going high-tech. She’s collaborating with Georgia Tech artificial intelligence scientist Thad Starner on what they call the Catacean Hearing and Telemetry (CHAT) project. The idea behind CHAT is to “co-create” a language with the dolphins using the sounds that dolphins normally use to communicate with each other. Once the dolphins have learned the “words,” the researchers hope to eavesdrop and pick up other “words”–real ones that the dolphins use during their normal communication.

The versatile sound-making abilities of dolphins poses a major challenge for CHAT. Dolphins can make sounds of frequencies up to 200 kilohertz. That’s about 10 times the highest pitch that humans can hear. Dolphins can also shift a signal’s pitch or maintain it for extended periods of time. In addition, they can change the direction of projected sounds without moving their heads, making it hard for researchers to identify which dolphin said what so that they can correlate the sounds with specific behaviors.

Link

WDCS researcher Dr Mike Bossley, who has observed Adelaide’s Port River dolphins for the past 24 years, said he had documented spectacular tail walking in two adult female dolphins, known as Billie and Wave.

Now four other individuals have been recorded perfecting their walking techniques – Wave’s calf Tallula, Bianca and her calf Hope, and calf Bubbles.

Tail walking is very rare in the wild and in thousands of hours of observation only one other dolphin has ever been observed tail walking in the Port River, and then only once.

The Port Adelaide dolphins are now said to be tail walking many times each day.
It is thought the mammals may have learned the remarkable skill from Billie – who spent a short period at a visitor attraction 22 years ago.

Dr Bossley said that the spread of tail walking appeared to be motivated by "fun", but it was also linked to a serious and fascinating cultural aspect previously unseen in the species.

Link

For centuries, philosophers claimed that the ability to make tools separated man from best. But in 1960, a young wildlife researcher named Jane Goodall told her boss, anthropologist Louis Leakey, that she'd witnessed chimpanzees stripping leaves from twigs and using them to “fish” for termites. A stunned Leakey responded, “Now we must redefine tool, redefine Man, or accept chimpanzees as humans.” Of course, we now know that chimps were only the beginning …

ELEPHANTS DRINK BOTTLED WATER

Not only do elephants use branches to swat flies and scratch their backs, but they also use tools to plan for the future. In South Africa, biologist Hezy Shoshani observed a pachyderm chewing bark into a large ball and then using the ball to plug up a nearby watering hole. The result was an elephant-size water bottle! Later, the animal came back to the spot, removed the ball, and quenched her thirst again. (Photo: Haaretz)

DOLPHINS COVER THEIR MOUTHS

In addition to bouncing balls on their noses, dolphins are also handy with sponges. Georgetown University researcher Janet Mann reported that bottle-nose dolphins in Australia's Shark Bay have been seen carrying sea sponges in their mouths while fishing along the ocean floor. When they dig into the sand to stir up the hidden fish, the sponges apparently act as a kind of mask. But, of the thousands of bottlenose dolphins identified in Shark Bay, only 41 have been observed doing this. Almost all of them were female, and the behavior seems to be something mothers teach their daughters. (Photo: National Academy of Sciences)

CHIMPS BUILD NUTCRACKERS

Chimpanzees of the Ivory Coast's Tai Forest are the Bob Villas of their species. In order to crack open the hard oil-palm nuts they adore, the chimps use two tools at once. First, they place a nit on a flat stone for traction, then they smash it with a pointed hammer-like stone. The skill takes young chimps several years to master, but once they get the hang of it, they'll store their favorite tool sets in a certain place and bring their nuts there for cracking. A recent archaeological dig found that Tai Forest Chimps have been making nutcrackers like these for 4,000 years.

OWLS MAKE THE MOST OUT OF COW POOP

Some burrowing owls have a strange habit of scattering cow manure around the entrance to their homes in the ground. Until recently, scientists thought this behavior evolved as a way to mask the owl's scent from potential predators. But researchers recently determined that the cow manure actually functions as bait to lure dung beetles, one of the owl's favorite foods.

CROW'S HAVE A LOT TO CROW ABOUT

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New Caledonian crows are widely renowned as the tool-using champs of the bird kingdom. To hunt for insects, they shale sticks into hooks and spears that allow them to probe tree crevices. They also modify those sticks into the correct size and shape by whittling them with a complex process of snips and tears. What's more, New Caledonian crows can make new tools out of old ones and pass along their new inventions to others.

The only other creatures on Earth to do this are humans.

VULTURES CAST STONES

[YouTube Clip]

Egyptian vultures love the taste of ostrich eggs, but they can't break the thick shells by just pecking at them. So hungry vultures go in search of rocks for the job, sometimes venturing up to 50 yards away. When they return, they dip their heads violently and hurl their rock at the egg, smashing open the shell. Surprisingly, this technique appears to be an innate behavior. When presented with tasty eggs, even vultures raised alone in captivity will go hunting for stones.

HERONS GO FISHING

[YouTube Clip]

Like Jane Goodall's chimpanzees, wild green-backed herons "fish" for their food. Using insects, feather, or even flowers, they drop their clever bait into the water and then gobble up the curious fish that some to the surface for a meal. Herons can be remarkably persistent fisherman, too. Reportedly, one researcher in Africa watched a heron drop the same bait into the water 28 times in a row before a fish finally bit.

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The article above, written by David Goldenberg, appeared in the Nov - Dec 2009 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission.

Don't forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog today!

Bottlenose dolphins catch fish with an unusual method -they corral them in a circle of mud!

– via mothertrip

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by THC55.

Three dolphins had been trapped for a week by drift ice in the harbor of Seal Cove, Newfoundland.  Residents of the small community appealed to the local department of fisheries and oceans, but received no response. 

Four local men finally took their own 16-foot boat, rammed it up on the ice, jumped out and began hacking a channel to the open sea…

“You’d hear them crying, every night,” said one of the men in the boat, Rodney Rice, 39. “I went down there last night and you could hear them trying to break up more ice. . . . They wouldn’t have lasted another day.”

“I had a floater suit on,” said Banks, “And they would come up and rest their head on me and I would keep their head out of the water so they can breathe through their blowhole.”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.

If there’s ever been two animals you wouldn’t have expected to see together it’s these two.

(Photo by Mike Owyang/AP)

Beauregard, an 8-month-old male Grants zebra is greeted by Brandy, an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin while out on a daily walk around the park at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2007. Beauregard was hand-reared at the park and takes daily strolls around the 135-acre park.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Jake.

Australian scientists have determined that dolphins, already famous for their intelligence and depth of emotions, are also talented chefs of the sea!

Photo: Simon White/AP

Dolphins are the chefs of the seas, having been seen going through precise and elaborate preparations to rid cuttlefish of ink and bone to produce a soft meal of calamari, Australian scientists say.

A wild female Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin was observed going through the same series of complicated steps to prepare cuttlefish prey for eating in the Spencer Gulf, in South Australia state.

“It’s a sign of how well their brains are developed. It’s a pretty clever way to get pure calamari without all the horrible bits,” Mark Norman, the curator of mollusks at Museum Victoria and a research team member, told the Canberra Times newspaper.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

Dusk came as Dabal’s hopes started to vanish and a creeping darkness began to envelope him. From out of nowhere, a pod of around 30 dolphins and a pair of whales measuring about 10 meters in length came and started to flank him on both sides.

“Dumating yung mga dolphins. Ang dami nila. Tapos may lumapit na dalawang balyena. Dun sila sa tigkabilang tabi ko lumalangoy,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer. (There were dolphins, lots of them. Then a pair of whales started swimming on both sides)

Dabal, 35 and father of two kids, swore it was not his mind playing tricks on him even as his energy was starting to fail him.

As he lay still on top of his piece of plastic board, Ronnie narrated how the dolphins would alternately nudge his tiny life raft using their pectoral fins towards the direction of land.

Dabal is a part-time dolphin warden for the bay. His duties include spotting dolphin groups for tourists and removing garbage from their territory. Puerto Princesa City Mayor Edward Hagedorn was excited by the story.

“Ronnie’s experience is the greatest proof that what we are doing to protect our marine environment is worth all the effort that we are putting into it. I’d like to think that this is the animals’ way of also thanking us for helping protect their habitat,” said Hagedorn.

Link -Thanks, Marco Martinez!

(image credit: Flickr user julesnene)