They could also be deployed to “counter-dive” and block Ukraine from infiltrating the harbour, it was reported. It wouldn’t be the first time dolphins have been used by a military power – both the US and the Soviet Union were said to have employed trained pods during the Cold War, and Russia is thought to have used dolphin pens in the Syria conflict in recent years – and dolphins’ extraordinary sonar makes them expert underwater mine-finders. That discovery came from analysis of Maxar Technology satellite images by the US Naval Institute, who found that two pens were placed at the entrance to the Crimean harbour in February, when the war with Ukraine started. It was reported last month that Russia has posted navy-trained dolphins to Sevastopol’s port to protect its Black Sea fleet from underwater sabotage. They may be involved in the Ukraine conflict And it may well be longer: 15 days was simply the amount of time that particular study, conducted by the National Marine Mammal Foundation in 2012, lasted. While seemingly sleep-deprived, dolphins have been observed to perform with near-perfect accuracy, using echolocation to monitor their surroundings while “asleep”, and continuing to breathe at the surface. This is known as “unihispheric sleep”, and researchers believe it gives them the ability to stay constantly alert for at least 15 days straight. When they rest, the left eye will be closed while the right half of the brain sleeps, and vice versa. They sleep with one eye openĪ dolphin is only ever half-asleep – and intentionally. Another known mating tactic employed by males is infanticide, since the mothers of those with calves then come into oestrus and are more receptive to male attention. It is disputed whether this counts as ‘rape’ – some argue that is over-anthropomorphising – but what isn’t disputed is that dolphins are nowhere near as gentle as they’d have you believe. In these groups, the males’ mating strategies have been observed to include alliances forged to rush at a female and take her away to have sex.Ībout once every four attempts, the female tries to escape but has her route blocked by the males, who violently subdue her. We go back to Shark Bay, where the social structures of those bottlenose dolphins has been studied intensively. They are sexual predators… possiblyĪ strong allegation, and we have to hope that dolphins aren’t yet across libel law, but the image of the creatures as entirely friendly, graceful and happy is countered by their much-discussed aggressive sexual behaviour. You’d have to imagine that living somewhere called Shark Bay adds a degree of stress, of course.
Those findings were based on three decades of observations of bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia, and published in the journal Nature Communications. If a dolphin helps another in danger and the latter survives, it’s likely the beneficiary will remember and repay the favour on the contrary, however, if a dolphin shirks responsibility and abandons its comrade, it’s unlikely the dolphin in danger will help that negligent member of the pod in future. It’s well known that the mammals are some of the most sociable in the sea, but according to researchers at the University of Bristol, their loyalty extends as far as only helping those that have come to their aid in the past. They hold grudgesĪ warning: always be nice to a dolphin, because it will remember. “Dolphins explored urine samples for longer if they came from known animals or when they were presented together with the dolphins’ unique and distinctive signature whistle, an acoustic identifier that works like a name,” Professor Vincent Janik, director of the Institute, said. You may wonder how this was tested: researchers at the Scottish Oceans Institute exposed dolphins to different urine samples and observed how they reacted. Researchers at the University of St Andrews discovered that dolphins can recognise family and friends not necessarily through seeing or hearing, but by tasting their urine and other bodily secretions. This news came only the day before we learned about dolphins’ coral body scrubs. They can recognise one another by the taste of their urine The film Flipper showed barely the half of it. Yet this is dolphins we’re talking about– they may be known as the “dogs of the sea”, but they’re far brighter than your average Labrador, and a lot more surprising.įrom urine tasting to sexually predatory behaviour, here are just a few things to know about the good, the bad and the occasionally ugly world of dolphins. “They don’t just go through – they go up, they come back down again and they rub their belly, their ventral area and the back.” “It’s very intensive,” Angela Ziltener, one of the study’s lead authors, said.
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