Dolphins form life raft to help dying friend

By Hum
in Science News & Discussion

 Share

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

Hum

Posted
Posted

For the first time, dolphins have been spotted teaming up to try to rescue an injured group member. The act does not necessarily mean dolphins are selfless or can empathise with the pain of their kin, however.

Kyum Park of the Cetacean Research Institute in Ulsan, South Korea, and colleagues were surveying cetaceans in the Sea of Japan in June 2008. They spent a day following a group of about 400 long-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus capensis).

In the late morning they noticed that about 12 dolphins were swimming very close together. One female was in difficulties: it was wriggling and tipping from side to side, sometimes turning upside-down. Its pectoral flippers seemed to be paralysed.

The other dolphins crowded around it, often diving beneath it and supporting it from below. After about 30 minutes, the dolphins formed into an impromptu raft: they swam side by side with the injured female on their backs. By keeping the injured female above water, they may have helped it to breathe, avoiding drowning.

After another few minutes some of the helper dolphins left. The injured dolphin soon dropped into a vertical position. The remaining helpers appeared to try and prop it up, possibly to keep its head above the surface, but it soon stopped breathing, say the researchers. Five dolphins stayed with it and continued touching its body, until it sank out of sight.

"It does look like quite a sophisticated way of keeping the companion up in the water," says Karen McComb at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. Such helping behaviours are only seen in intelligent, long-lived social Movie Camera animals. In most species, injured animals are quickly left behind.

While it may seem selfless to help an injured fellow, McComb says the helper dolphins might get some benefit. Rescuing the struggling dolphin could help maintain their group, and thus control of their territory. Furthermore, if the group contains close relatives, protecting those relatives helps the dolphins preserve their shared genes.

The simple act of working together could also bond the group more strongly. "It makes a lot of sense in a highly intelligent and social animal for there to be support of an injured animal," McComb says.

The act of helping also seems to suggest that the dolphins understand when others are suffering, and can even empathise: that is, imagine themselves in the place of the suffering dolphin. But while this is possible, McComb says the helping behaviour could evolve without the need for empathy.

There have been reports of single dolphins helping others, generally mothers helping their calves, but no cases of groups of dolphins working together to help another. Dolphins have also been seen interacting with the corpses of dead dolphins, which some researchers interpret as a form of mourning.

source & video

Grand Master

Scorbing

Posted
Posted

Dolphins are extremely intelligent. They have a natural curiosity for Humans. They like us and there has been many documented cases where Dolphins have helped Humans who were drowning.

Here's another interesting case, video taped, of a Dolphin seeking help from a diver to remove a fishing line from his fin. Very interesting.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10861374

  • remixedcat and Hum
  • Like 2
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

  • Posts

    • Politically funny images of the World

      By +Edouard · Posted

    • Anyone Here With Turbo Pascal Experience?

      By Almohandis · Posted

      Turbo Pascal was my first real programming experience more than 30 years ago at university. I mostly taught myself from the included examples and help documentation, because the university only taught the basic syntax and philosophy of Pascal, without going deeply into Turbo Pascal’s advanced features. I still remember when I discovered that I could embed assembly language directly into Pascal code, call BIOS functions, manipulate screen memory, use mouse interrupts, and control peripherals from my programs. That opened huge doors for me. Programming back then felt really fun, direct, and close to the machine. What I loved about Pascal was its readability and the almost instant compile time. Turbo Pascal was an amazing environment, but unfortunately Turbo Pascal for Windows 3 did not feel like it fully carried that legacy forward. Later, Delphi got things back on the right track after the messy transition to TP for Windows. Sadly, Delphi suffered from years of uncertainty as it moved from Borland to CodeGear and then to Embarcadero. That instability made many developers lose confidence in it, even though Delphi itself remained a powerful and productive tool. I still work with Delphi from time to time, but I definitely miss the old days of Turbo Pascal.
    • Qualcomm reportedly in talks to build custom video chips for TikTok parent ByteDance

      By spaceship9876 · Posted

      I hope this encodes in to AV1 or AV2 as currently tiktok uses h265 and h264.
    • Qualcomm reportedly in talks to build custom video chips for TikTok parent ByteDance

      By Karthik Mudaliar · Posted

      Qualcomm reportedly in talks to build custom video chips for TikTok parent ByteDance by Karthik Mudaliar Qualcomm is reportedly in advanced discussions to provide custom chip-design services to Chinese tech giant ByteDance, the same company behind TikTok. According to a report from Reuters, Qualcomm could be involved in designing custom silicon tailored for ByteDance's massive data-center workloads. If it goes through, the deal would make ByteDance one of Qualcomm's early anchor customers for its fastly growing custom chip-design division, For years, Qualcomm was the king of making smartphone processors and modems. The company has also been moving into the PC ecosystem and other formats such as on-device AI for Android XR headsets. However, this particular deal is about Qualcomm's custom Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). For a platform like TikTok, ByteDance needs hardware that can help it ingest, process, and serve billions of short-form videos daily. Generalised hardware is no longer the most cost-effective and efficient route, which is why ByteDance is trying to develop custom Video Processing Units (VPUs). VPUs designed specifically for ByteDance’s algorithmic needs could drastically reduce data-center power consumption and improve encoding speeds at an unprecedented scale. The underlying tech behind these processors is actually from Qualcomm's recent acquisition of AlphaWave Semi, a high-speed connectivity specialist company. By combining AlphaWave’s high-bandwidth IP with Qualcomm’s architectural expertise, the company could begin mass production by the end of 2026, if the talks go through. All this also comes at a time when U.S.-China tech relations have dwindled. Escalating trade frictions between Washington and Beijing have severely impacted the export of high-end AI chips from U.S. firms like Nvidia, AMD, and Lam Research. Yet, the Qualcomm-ByteDance discussions show that U.S. tech companies are still actively seeking growth avenues and are open to doing business with China, where regulators still permit. Reuters notes that the outcome of this deal could be uncertain, and ByteDance might also seek partners other than Qualcomm. via Reuters | Image via DepositPhotos.com
    • Creative Sound Blaster AE-X PCIe review: your headphones will love it

      By Jaybonaut · Posted

      Same.

  • Recent Achievements

    • Rookie
      DaviKar went up a rank
      Rookie
    • Dedicated
      HidekoYamamoto94 earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • One Month Later
      timbobit earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      nates earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Almohandis earned a badge
      Week One Done

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      456
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      164
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      117
    4. 4
      Michael Scrip
      83
    5. 5
      Xenon
      69
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!