Tuesday, September 25, 2007

The constant smirking of dolphins should have tipped us off

The following is an excerpt from an article in Discover magazine.

"Their constant smirking should have tipped us off, but we were so damned in love, dazzled by the glare from those latex-smooth exteriors, charmed by those adorably wobbly tail stands at Sea World. [...] Now, however, if a team of scottish marine biologists are to be believed - and if you've ever dipped even a toe into a body of scottish water you have some sense of those people's rigor - dolphins are not to be trusted. They gossip. We know this because we know their names. Each bottlenose individual identifies itself by a unique pattern of clicks along the lines of woo-woo-wee-wee, or even woo-wee-woo-woo-wee-woo. What was not known until the Scottish research, however, is that a pair of dolphins use the name of a third dolphin when that third dolphin isn't present. In other words, dolphins gossip."

I just had to post this one.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

well, given their brain to body mass ratio, their incredibly rich sensory environment, and their reliance on groups to nurture and hunt, i am surprised that they only gossip... i would expect crime to be present as well... i am sure there is even the dolphin equivalent of politics...

Douglas Adams had it right all along

Deepak Gupta said...

Yes happens ... i just love those , and had they legs and hands , God , if they wud have talking capabailities ... we wud have done a great understanding of even sea

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