Clever Dolphins Use Shells to Catch Fish

[n2doc]

By Brandon Keim




Already famed as Earth’s first tool-using marine mammals, the bottlenose dolphins of Australia’s Shark Bay have proved handy yet again, by using conch shells to trap tasty fish, then shaking them into their mouths like sardines from a tin.

Unlike sponging, however, in which dolphins use sponges to find fishes hiding in mud, conching isn’t yet widespread in Shark Bay. It appears to be a relatively new innovation, pioneered by a few individuals and finally catching on.

“The extent to which the conch shell is manipulated and the rarity of the behavior suggest that ‘conching’ takes some skill and practice and might thus be another rare individual foraging tactic in Shark Bay,” wrote biologists led by the University of Zurich’s Michael Krutzen in Marine Mammal Science.

While that study came out in April, an Aug. 24 press release from Australia’s Murdoch University, home of co-authors Simon Allen and Lars Bejder, reported that conching has been observed at least six times in the last four months. That’s as often as conching was seen between the first sighting in December 1996 and the afternoon of July 31, 2007, when during a survey of western Shark Bay the researchers spotted an unfamiliar dolphin.


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http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/dolphin-fishing/

[xchrom]

1. cool. nt

[Gman]

2. They will one day rule the world

and it will be a lot more peaceful.

[david_vincent]

4. If they can survive what we're doing to the oceans

Permanent Jellyfish State, anyone?...

[MineralMan]

3. Clever. n/t

[Tyrs WolfDaemon]

5. We should make some dolphin tools and place them

in these areas to see if the local dolphins figure out what to do with them.




We could create a whole new dolphin-human economy...

wait, that's bad. We'd just end up f*ing the dolphins for their water and fish.