On May 2, 2022, the New York Times published a somewhat stunned press release in which scientists found two dolphins playing with a python in a bolivian river, and it seemed normal for dolphins to play, but when one of the dolphins turned around and belly up, they found an abnormality of dolphins!
"Energetic" dolphins, really just play with pythons?
In August 2021, a team of researchers who were doing biodiversity research near the Tijamuchi River in Bolivia discovered the unusual site, and Steffen Reichler, a biologist and team member at the Natural History Museum of Santa Cruz de la Cerano Kempf Mercardo in Bolivia, said they had only spotted two dolphins (Bolivian pufferfish) frolicking.
But when I saw what was in the mouth of the two dolphins, I was shocked, and the two dolphins actually bit a python in their mouths, which looked like it should be a local beni python, or rather, it should be a neck, because it looked like the python was not a dolphin opponent at all, but it was still intact, perhaps the high-IQ dolphin caught the python playing, and Steffen Reichler thought the same.
Dolphins are very playful, when someone in the water may play with people when they are active, and dolphins also have the habit of saving people in the sea, unfortunately when they fall into the sea, if there is a group of sharks nearby, it is estimated that there is less fierceness, but if there is a group of dolphins, there is a good chance that they may be saved, although they do not know why dolphins save people, or they just want to play with you, but this is enough, at least humans know that dolphins are friends.
The two dolphins played with the python for about 7 to 8 minutes, and an unusual thing happened when Dr. Reichler thought the half-aquatic Beni python should be dead, and when one of the dolphins turned around and floated on the water, Dr. Reichler saw the second brother in the dolphin's abdomen, standing tall.
Diana Rice, a marine mammal scientist and cognitive psychologist at Hunter College in New York, says dolphins and pythons may be playing with dolphins triggering dolphin stimuli, and that dolphins may solve problems in living or inanimate objects when they trigger stimuli while playing with other animals or toys.
It's really hard to imagine that a highly intelligent dolphin would do such a thing! According to Steffen Reichler, because the river is turbid, they didn't take a clear picture of what dolphins did when submerged underwater, but scientists believe it is likely to be inappropriate behavior for children.
Scientists have also written this rare case into a paper published in the journal Ecology for scientists studying dolphin behavior.
High IQ Dolphin: How Violent Is It?
In fact, the behavior of dolphins, a highly intelligent species, is very "violent" in the eyes of humans, and there have been many reports on the chaotic "private life" of dolphins in the past few decades, and the following is to see how "violent" you are familiar with dolphins.
Dolphin: What kind of animal is it?
Dolphin is actually a toothed whale, together with killer whales and sperm whales belong to the toothed whale order, is a marine mammal breathing with lungs, they use echolocation in the ocean, there are more than 40 kinds of animals in the world are named dolphins, including the familiar bottlenose dolphin (bottlenose dolphin) and Chinese white dolphin and Amazon pufferfish, from the ocean to freshwater rivers, are their habitat.
Dolphins have spindle-shaped bodies, smooth and hairless skin, very flexible bodies, swim fast and like to jump out of the water, are the fastest mammals in the water, usually they are group movements, and occasionally single dolphins. They range in size from 1 meter long and 30 kg (pygmy dolphins) to 9.5 meters long and weigh 14 tons (killer whales).
Most of the time we talk about dolphins are bottlenose dolphins (bottlenose dolphins), whose upper and lower jaws are relatively long, which is also the origin of their name. There are more than 20 teeth in the upper and lower jaws, and there is a stomata in the center of the forehead, which is the breathing hole of the dolphin, the bottle-nosed dolphin is between 2 and 4 meters long, and the weight is about 150 to 650 kg, generally the male is larger than the female, and they live in the middle and low latitudes of the north and south latitudes.
The most notable feature of bottlenose dolphins is that their positive image looks like a smiling face, so bottlenose dolphins are extremely popular around the world, and bottlenose dolphins must be one of the most important marine animals in aquariums around the world.
Dolphins will perceive the surrounding environment through sonar, this use of ultrasound to detect the environment is much better than vision underwater, such as zero visibility under turbid water, but ultrasound is unimpeded, of course, dolphins also have excellent vision, they communicate with each other, group action, high IQ.
Bottlenose dolphins weigh even 0.1 kg more than the human brain, up to more than 1.6 kg, they have strong comprehension and high IQ! This also leads to their very complex social behavior, and the various "violent" behaviors of dolphins are also related to their high intelligence.
Dolphins' "violence": what is the extent?
On November 28, 2019, the NCBI published a paper titled "Affiliation history and age similarity predict alliance formation in adult male bottlenose dolphins", and the introduction was even more surprising:
The study subjects are bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia, who have formed long-term and multi-layered alliances to obtain reproductive rights with females in estrus in the long-term "social group" life, and in order to complete the breeding cause, dolphins will form alliances to find females and surround them:
In this study, scientists found that dolphins that do not join the alliance have difficulty in obtaining mating opportunities to leave offspring, while these alliances that provide opportunities for male dolphins are divided into multiple layers, the first-level alliance has only 2 to 3 males, it is part of a larger second-level alliance, and the second-level alliance is generally composed of 4 to 14 males.
Then the alliance will wander in the ocean, encounter a single female dolphin will rise up and attack it, this attack will really happen, take turns to rush, open mouth bite, although it will not cause death, but it is not a flirtation between the opposite sex, and the purpose is to "force it to obey", sometimes the operation can also lead to the death of the female, such as the female dolphin is likely to occur when the two male dolphin alliances are competed.
Overwhelmed female dolphins will often be forced by the male dolphin group's obscenity, you can imagine how tragic the female dolphin's encounter is, and the male dolphin sometimes for the right to reproduce, there will be juvenile killing behavior:
The gestation period of dolphins is 11 to 12 months, and the reproductive interval is generally 2 years, because the cubs need to be cared for, the lactation period is 12 to 18 months, and the female dolphins will not accept the male dolphins during the breastfeeding period, so the male dolphins will kill the cubs in some cases, forcing the female dolphins to enter the next round of reproduction.
Such behavior is actually not uncommon among animals, for example, after the male lion becomes the leader, there is also such a child-killing behavior, the purpose is also very simple, to continue their own bloodline, as for who the cub is, it does not care! Obviously, this behavior has completely exceeded the bottom line of humans, especially dolphins who are much higher than the IQ of lions, which is really unacceptable.
There is a long history of research on this "violence" of dolphins, such as an article in the New York Times on February 18, 1992 describing the crazy behavior of dolphins, describing the clever but more sinister and cunning dolphins here, and even why the competition for female dolphins colludes with other dolphins.
Among them, the researcher Dr. Connor has never understood a phenomenon, corresponding to the alliance behavior of male dolphins, there is also a female dolphin alliance, which is relatively rare but still exists, and the behavior is to isolate the male dolphins they "like", swim and play with them, etc., just like the current social group of little sisters, forcing the boys they like to play with them.
This behavior of dolphins has evolved into a very complex social behavior, and perhaps in hundreds of thousands of years the dolphin will evolve a more complex social structure, so it will often be discussed that after the disappearance of humans, will dolphins dominate the world?
Reference:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/02/science/dolphins-anaconda-bolivia.html
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.3724