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Dolphins' elaborate octopus-hunting strategy
- munificent 10y agoI'm probably missing something obvious, but... why don't the dolphins just chew their food better?
- SolaceQuantum 10y agoDolphins haven't developed the kind of jaws necessary to chew substantially like a human, who chews with molars. Also humans still can choke to death on octopus.
- nkristoffersen 10y agoAnd pretzels :-)
- ionwake 10y agoI wager that the whole purpose of throwing the tentacles into the air is to provide the dying organism with a lack of stimulus to the neurons in the tentacles for a few seconds, on water impact, the renewed stimulus would make the tentacles move. I reckon after a few tries the tentacles just run out of energy. This is just a thought and may not be correct.
- astrodust 10y agoThey don't chew. Chewing is what land animals who eat leafy plants do. They can bite, and that's about it. Do these look like chewing teeth? http://4everstatic.com/pictures/674xX/animals/aquatic-life/dolphin,-teeth-190821.jpg http://4everstatic.com/pictures/674xX/animals/aquatic-life/d...
- munificent 10y agoAh, of course. That makes sense. :)
- custos 10y agoThis makes me think of primitive humans working together to kill large animals for food. Super dangerous and only possible when working together. Perhaps one day, thousands of years from now, technologically advanced dolphins will one day watch us doing the same thing again, and they will have a similar article about us!
- npongratz 10y ago> Perhaps one day, thousands of years from now, technologically advanced dolphins will one day watch us doing the same thing again, and they will have a similar article about us! I'd be curious to know how much of human technical advancement was thanks to the ability to relatively easily smelt metal, and whether the inability to easily smelt underwater creates an impediment to technical advancement of species living underwater.
- maxerickson 10y agoHumans were doing pretty good already in the late stone age.
- stcredzero 10y agoAn ocean environment would wreak havoc or greatly inconvenience on all of the materials of stone age technology.
- stcredzero 10y agoSeawater also plays hell with ropes and hide. You can't construct with stone, because it sinks to the bottom, and the silty bottom is a rotten foundation. You can't build with wood because it floats away, it will soften and weather quickly, and things will eat it quickly. You can't wear tools, as that ruins your streamlining, and fast swimmers will generate high drag forces on anything they wear. The ocean isn't a good place for tool building!
- landryraccoon 10y ago
- londons_explore 10y agoIt seems surprising that an octopus leg hitting the oceans surface 15 times kills it. I can't imagine that a dolphin can throw an octopus leg at more than 15-20 mph, and at that kind of speed I wouldn't imagine damage to a soft bodied creature. I would imagine a better technique to be to leave the octopus legs for 10 minutes for lack of bloodflow to kill it. Wonder why they don't do that? Too hard to defend a bleeding morsel of food from other predators?
- garaetjjte 10y ago>I would imagine a better technique to be to leave the octopus legs for 10 minutes for lack of bloodflow to kill it. Arms work even 1h after cutting off: http://moscow.sci-hub.cc/58b56284136af39dc0eaf7491b31d759/hague2013.pdf http://moscow.sci-hub.cc/58b56284136af39dc0eaf7491b31d759/ha...
- 0xfeba 10y agoInteresting survival technique, if I can assume it is. The octopus in question dies but the dolphin who tried to eat it does also. Serves as a warning to dissuade eating the species/order as a whole. Same as poisoned toads in that regard, just a little more zombie-like.
- quotha 10y agoYou try doing that, eat it, and see what happens
- steffan 10y agoI suspect the defensive mechanism in the octopus leg is triggered by the impact. After a number of impacts the remaining energy in the leg is exhausted and it can no longer harm the dolphin.
- lnanek2 10y agoIf you watch the video, it's not just throwing the leg, there's also a behavior where they hold the legs in their mouth and slam it into the ocean as hard as they can by bending sideways. Considering dolphins use those muscles to swim, they are likely very strong, considerably stronger than human arms tenderizing meat with a mallet like we do. I don't see why you would think leaving the legs alone for ten minutes would be as effective as hammering them for ten minutes. What's going to bleed out and go lifeless quicker, an arm left alone or an arm being beat on?
- awjr 10y ago>Sprogis and colleagues muse that the nutritional value of an octopus must be "substantial." Or, as marine biologist Holly Bik points out at Deep Sea News, maybe it's just that "dolphins are a$$holes." Best line from the article :D
- quotha 10y agoor the worst line
- erikpukinskis 10y agoI didn't get it
- tetraodonpuffer 10y ago> It's still unclear why dolphins are willing to risk so much for such a small meal. maybe it's just they like the taste? it's not like we don't go out of our own way to find some delicacies just because we are in the mood for them. I know anthropomorphizing animals is a no-no these days, but trying to explain everything based on "nutritional value" seems a bit narrow minded...
- rwc 10y agoWhy is it a "no-no these days"?
- euyyn 10y agoIt's a no-no always because it's poor reasoning. Saying "these days" is a way to paint it as some kind of fashion above which the commenter is. In this specific case, I reckon dolphins have taste buds too, so it isn't really anthropomorphizing. I think it's a good hypothesis.
- tetraodonpuffer 10y agoI am saying "these days" because from what I understand in past times anthropomorphizing animals used to not be as frowned upon in literature. I might well be wrong though of course! If so apologies, I did not mean to imply it as a fashion or as a negative, just that sometimes I feel that the simplest explanation (dolphins like a treat) should win over the more complex one (octopuses must have some great nutritional value)
- interfixus 10y agoActually, it's the "we shouldn't anthropomorphize" which is poor reasoning. Because of course we should, we should just call it something else. I am not really aware of any mammal behaviour that I cannot somewhat relate to at gut level. You may say I anthropomorphize, or you may say I equate, it doesn't really matter. There isn't a physiological or neurologic feature we don't share, me and all those other mammals. I have some language and some reasoning power to top it all off with, but our sensations, reactions, emotionals, motivators, fears, pains and joys are clearly of very similar nature. Of course they are - they run on the same basic hardware architecture. And now, if you will excuse me, my dog wants to go for a walk. I know exactly what he means. [Edit: typo]
- mzzter 10y ago"Art of the octopus smackdown" haha very colorful writing
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sevensor 10y agoI once saw fresh octopus prepared at a seaside barbecue place. The first thing the octopus did after the cook grabbed it from the kiddie pool full of seawater was to wrap its tentacles around her forearm. Before it could get too firm of a grip, she threw it down on the concrete floor with a loud smack and disassembled it with a cleaver while it was still stunned. It was pretty intense. I can see why the dolphins would have a complex strategy for dealing with the much larger octopus they consume. Now that it's become clear that the octopus is an intelligent creature capable of solving problems and making plans, I'm going to eat less sophisticated mollusks and leave octopus to the dolphins.
- overcast 10y agoI feel bad about eating intelligent species, however if it makes you feel any better, their lifespan is only 3-5 years.
- roberto 10y agoRelevant SMBC: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/moral-relativity http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/moral-relativity
- mmjaa 10y agoI'm with you, I can't stand the thought of eating them. They're just too darn smart, and seem really aware of you. I've swum all over the world, and any time I get a chance, I'll easily change my plans just to hang and watch a cephalopod in the wild. Thing is, too many times I've felt the situation reversed - that I'm swimming along, and the octopus are watching me, hanging out, trying to learn what this strange creature is up to in their ocean.
- cannonpr 10y agoI used to love eating octopus particularly in sashimi form or nigiri, after learning more about their intelligence and behaviours I find my self increasingly unable to eat them... While I understand why I have developed this response in respect to a relatively intelligent animal... it's a shame because they really are so damn tasty. In other words I totally get the dolphins.
- mmjaa 10y agoI've seen Octopus using tools. I'm from south-west Australia (where these dolphins were observed) and grew up swimming along the coast, scuba and snorkelling to much delight. Once, in a little sand hole near Yanchep, I was floating around on a particularly hot day, when I thought I saw a crayfish just lolling around on the ocean floor. Diving deeper to get a closer look, I realised it was just the head of the crayfish, long-since hollowed out, albeit with a bit of flesh still onboard. I took an even closer look, and what I thought was a bit of weed attached to it was actually a long, slender tentacle, which I followed back to a minuscule hole in the rocky sand, and therein I spotted the rest of the octopus. Delighted, I stuck around for a while to watch. The octopus was fishing! It held out the cray corpse just a little, out in the currents, waiting patiently for the stupid little white fish to come and try to nail a bite! When a particularly dumb little fish got its fangs in, BAM! Out came another tentacle, fast as light, and snatched that dumb fish into the hole. All the while, the original bait tentacle continued to just lull about, swinging and swaying, getting those dumb fish even closer and closer, ever more tantalising. I stayed and watched it all day - it apparently had a nearly-insatiable hunger, or maybe it was just really enjoying itself. To my dying days, I'll never forget that clever little cephalopod ..
- max_ 10y agoMay be zoologists have been underestimating the intelligence of mollusks
- macintux 10y agoWe've known for a while that octopuses are surprisingly intelligent. Great read: https://orionmagazine.org/article/deep-intellect/ https://orionmagazine.org/article/deep-intellect/ (tl;dr: don't eat octopus!)
- TuringTest 10y agoI was wary of eating octopus, but fell relieved now, knowing that dolphins also love them as delicatessen. :-P
- hellofunk 10y agoOne more reason why I realize how similar I am to a dolphin. You have no idea how many times I have risked my life so I too could eat octopus.
- gigatexal 10y agoThe octopus and likely the dolphin is probably much smarter than we give them credit for. On a whim one day I studied the octopus and finding them majestic and so smart I stopped eating them. The kicker was when I learned that female octopus when giving birth find a rock out of sight of predators and spend their last days and minutes doing nothing (no eating etc) but waiting for the next generation to birth and then they subsequently die. It was moving.
- zeristor 10y agoDavid Brin's series the "Uplift War" had a backdrop to human's raising the intelligence of a number of Earth origin animals. How I wish he had the human society uplift the Octopus instead of the expected mammals.
- Cpoll 10y agoIt's not clear to me that they're "risking death." The article reveals that dolphins can be killed trying to eat octopus in a more conventional fashion, but I don't see any "risk" involved with their throwing method.
- astrodust 10y agoThey might be teenaged dolphins that do things on a dare. They're smart and they get bored.
- khedoros1 10y agoWhat about if they don't throw it enough times to stun it? Or if that particular octopus is particularly stun-resistant? Or if the dolphin hesitates at some point in the grab-and-throw maneuver, giving the legs a chance to grab on to its face, mouth, or throat? It seems like there would be a lot of opportunities for error.
- awinter-py 10y agoHmm -- I didn't think dolphin airways were connected to their digestive system.
- wungsten 10y agoYou're right, they're not. I wonder what the cause of death was, then.
- telesilla 10y agoI've seen this behaviour with seals when kayaking. Fascinating to watch, and I swear they were just showing off to us bunch of humans hanging out enthralled by the sight of a large seal slamming the octopus over and over again against the water until it was dead enough to disappear with back into the deep.
- metricodus 10y agoI would like to challenge my hard-core religious physics and biology teacher from 7th grade with this evidence. He kept giving me as low a grade as what was acceptable, while I still aced pretty much every test. (Sweden. Småland. 90s. I don't think this is an issue for todays kids.)
- itchyjunk 10y agoI thought the brain:body size rank was Humans, chimp then dolphins but looks like I am wrong about it[0]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalization_quotient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalization_quotient
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- xHopen 10y agoThe full article is just amazing, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mms.12405/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mms.12405/full I love and fear dolphins at the same time I will totally continue eating octopus