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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  4330 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Scientists Say Dolphins Are People

That's lovely. I wonder exactly how intelligent dolphins really are.





mk  ·  4330 days ago  ·  link  ·  

IMO it's a matter of context. But some of their intelligence is obvious.

user-inactivated  ·  4330 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That video's making me a melancholy sort of happy, and I'm having strange far-fetched thoughts. I posit that dolphins are basically the perfect creatures: intelligent but peace-loving, fun, etc. Do dolphins ever fight each other? (If they do, lie to me; this has put me in a great mood and I don't want to spoil it.)

AlderaanDuran  ·  4329 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Do dolphins ever fight each other?

Yup, they will actually kill weak members of the pod or others they don't like, including infants and juveniles. They more commonly kill other types of dolphins and porpoises, but have also been documented killing within their same species. They also appear to kill for pleasure in some cases. Dolphins are jerks.... but so are some humans.

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/bizarre/news-bottle-nos...

There's video out there of them doing this, I saw it on a documentary once years ago, but youtube is coming up empty. Only found videos that really don't show them doing much. In the documentary I recall them breaching and ramming each other right in the mid section, and it was the whole pod doing it to one dolphin. It was sad. :(

    Dolphins engage in acts of aggression towards each other. The older a male dolphin is, the more likely his body is to be covered with bite scars. Male dolphins engage in such acts of aggression apparently for the same reasons as humans: disputes between companions and competition for females. Acts of aggression can become so intense that targeted dolphins sometimes go into exile as a result of losing a fight.

    Male bottlenose dolphins have been known to engage in infanticide. Dolphins have also been known to kill porpoises for reasons which are not fully understood, as porpoises generally do not share the same diet as dolphins, and are therefore not competitors for food supplies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin#Behavior

KenyanSocialist61  ·  4329 days ago  ·  link  ·  

there's also the phenomenon of blowhole sex

AlderaanDuran  ·  4329 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Now that I was unaware of and am now frightened enough to not look it up.

b_b  ·  4329 days ago  ·  link  ·  

If you don't want to be sad about dolphins then don't under any circumstances watch The Cove.

lil  ·  4329 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I checked the same sources as AlderaanDuran but also noticed your plea

    If they do, lie to me
and decided to respect it. Maybe it's a gender thing.
user-inactivated  ·  4329 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I was gonna say...

Ah well, it's another day now and I'm not really in a good mood anyhow. Might as well ruin it with thinking about "blowhole sex."