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> 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

> 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 ago
Why is it a "no-no these days"?
- euyyn 10y ago
  It'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 ago
    I 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 ago
    Actually, 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]
    - kitsunesoba 10y ago
      This is my line of thinking as well. Physiologically we are extremely similar to other mammals, especially when you take a look at the extreme fringes of life and realize how utterly different from us it can be. It's logical that large portions of our life experiences are the same, too. The differences are mostly fine details. If you want to find where our perceptions differ from that of a cat or a dog or an elephant, I believe that anything cultural or learned in nature is a better place to start. If every human experiences it, it's likely that other mammals experience it too on some level. I suspect that if our experiences shared few or no similarities, humans would've had far less success in the way of keeping, training, and befriending animals. The ability to accurately empathize with other creatures has to have jump-started the process in many cases.
      - erikpukinskis 10y ago
        We're just a dog that can read a newspaper. We think we're the newer, higher species, but the newspaper is.
    - simonh 10y ago
      I fully concur. We and other mammals inherited many of our behaviors such as emotional attachments, social bonds, play, etc from common ancestors. It seems reasonable to me that our experience of these is similar to that of the common ancestor, and therefore that other Mammals experience of them is also similar to ours. Not the same maybe, but similar.
    - lloydde 10y ago
      Neither your example or the start of the thread seem like anthropomorphizing. Both "liking" the taste and "enjoying" outdoors or exercise are well established reactions in numerous animals. Anthropomorphizing is most easily described as the subject using human-like reasoning or rationalization. Sure, the classic definition is broader than that with angry weather. I do agree with your point regarding g mammalian comparisons, but it's not clear to me that was demonstrated.
- clydethefrog 10y ago
  I would even argue it's the opposite. The book by biologist Frans de Waal - Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?[1] was in a lot of best book lists. [1] See a review about it that explains his findings. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/how-animals-think/476364/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/how-ani...
cmdrfred 10y ago
Perhaps the nutritional value is why it tastes good to them from an evolutionary standpoint.
- zenlikethat 10y ago
  Yup, that's why we like sweet food, because once upon a time it was few and far between, so you darn well better eat it when you come across it.
  - nemo44x 10y ago
    Even more than that it is believed by many. The idea being humans evolved to enjoy sweet for the reasons you pointed out - it means carbohydrates which are dense in calories. Humans evolved to enjoy a certain amount of salt as it is essential to our survival; bitterness tends to be found in toxic things and is generally not palatable as a last warning to avoid ingesting bad food; Sour can be enjoyable but it also signals under ripe fruit and rotten meats as well as dangerous acid levels in some instances. Umami is thought to encourage the consumption of important amino acids. It makes sense that earlier ancestors who maybe found bitter very enjoyable and sweetness not so enjoyable died off from a lack of calories or eating poisonous things before reproducing. And it makes sense that while across cultures people eat very different foods, you see the same patterns in terms of umami and sweet being considered desirable and bitterness often rejected. In fact the human tongue is considerably more complex than traditionally assumed. For example, besides the umami taste receptors recently proven to exist there are also studies looking to see if we have taste receptors for "fat", "starch" and even "metallic" flavors, among other things. The chemical reaction between molecules and how the brain decodes the signals produced by them is fascinating when it comes to the flavor of things.
fredley 10y ago
Humans will risk death to ingest or otherwise put things in their body, but not usually because they're tasty, usually because they're addictive. Do dolphins get high on octopus?
- Nadya 10y ago
  Some potentially deadly foods are considered a tasty delicacy. See, fugu [0]. Which can be really, really really poisonous [1]. It makes cyanide seem harmless in comparison. Although I just learned from Wikipedia that apparently we figured out how to raise non-poisonous pufferfish. Neat. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugu [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrodotoxin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrodotoxin
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Apparently people occasionally choke on live octopus (which is served in Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San-nakji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San-nakji ).
    - clairity 10y ago
      you can get that in koreatown in LA as well (probably elsewhere too but that's where i've had it). the taste is pretty subtle but it's weird that it squirms in your mouth.
  - eru 10y ago
    I had fugu. Taste was OK. I didn't die. Perhaps it's only worth eating for the thrill?
    - gozur88 10y ago
      It's a competition of sorts. There used to be people where I work who would one-up each other on spicy food. They were long past the point where you could actually taste anything but the "heat", but they wanted to see who could take the most punishment. I have a Japanese friend who explained the fugu thing to me (at least, the way he saw it). Every once in awhile a group of people die when they eat fugu that's not prepared properly. So when you go out with your colleagues you try to work the latest such incident into the conversation, and then you order fugu. The goal is to eat it with the supreme nonchalance while trying to make your coworkers visibly nervous.
SilasX 10y ago
"Why does my cat keep bringing back dead mice? He doesn't need to hunt, I give him all the food he needs!" 'Why do you keep having sex? You already have all the kids you want!'
circlefavshape 10y ago
Or hunting something dangerous is just fun?
- vinchuco 10y ago
  Do they compete for the same food?
glenstein 10y ago
>I know anthropomorphizing animals is a no-no these days Well, I think you are making a good point here, so I wouldn't write it off on that basis. In the rush to avoid anthropomorphizing animals, people sometimes go to the opposite extreme and assume that things like "taste" are uniquely, exclusively human experiences and can't be extended to animals. That seems to attribute full ownership of a category of experience to humans, and to me that kind of assumption is more problematic, if we're talking about the excesses of anthropocentrism. I think your explanation makes perfect sense.
- m_fayer 10y ago
  Any dog owner can tell you stories of the lengths to which animals will go for food that they find particularly tasty.
  - pc86 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure my dog would kill me if he thought there was a quarter tablespoon of peanut butter inside my skull.
  - rayboy1995 10y ago
    Yes, my dog loves cheese. He will kill for cheese.
maxxxxx 10y ago
I have seen dolphins swim in the wake of a ship and I strongly believe they did it just for the kick of it. Maybe they showed off to the dolphin girls, who knows?
pvaldes 10y ago
I think reading the article that the risk is much overstated for sexy story-telling purposes. Dolphins of course do not choke if their mouth is full or blocked. They breath by the spiracle in the top of their head.

rwc 10y ago

Why is it a "no-no these days"?

euyyn 10y ago
It'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 ago
  I 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 ago
  Actually, 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]
  - kitsunesoba 10y ago
    This is my line of thinking as well. Physiologically we are extremely similar to other mammals, especially when you take a look at the extreme fringes of life and realize how utterly different from us it can be. It's logical that large portions of our life experiences are the same, too. The differences are mostly fine details. If you want to find where our perceptions differ from that of a cat or a dog or an elephant, I believe that anything cultural or learned in nature is a better place to start. If every human experiences it, it's likely that other mammals experience it too on some level. I suspect that if our experiences shared few or no similarities, humans would've had far less success in the way of keeping, training, and befriending animals. The ability to accurately empathize with other creatures has to have jump-started the process in many cases.
    - erikpukinskis 10y ago
      We're just a dog that can read a newspaper. We think we're the newer, higher species, but the newspaper is.
  - simonh 10y ago
    I fully concur. We and other mammals inherited many of our behaviors such as emotional attachments, social bonds, play, etc from common ancestors. It seems reasonable to me that our experience of these is similar to that of the common ancestor, and therefore that other Mammals experience of them is also similar to ours. Not the same maybe, but similar.
  - lloydde 10y ago
    Neither your example or the start of the thread seem like anthropomorphizing. Both "liking" the taste and "enjoying" outdoors or exercise are well established reactions in numerous animals. Anthropomorphizing is most easily described as the subject using human-like reasoning or rationalization. Sure, the classic definition is broader than that with angry weather. I do agree with your point regarding g mammalian comparisons, but it's not clear to me that was demonstrated.
clydethefrog 10y ago
I would even argue it's the opposite. The book by biologist Frans de Waal - Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?[1] was in a lot of best book lists. [1] See a review about it that explains his findings. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/how-animals-think/476364/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/how-ani...

cmdrfred 10y ago

Perhaps the nutritional value is why it tastes good to them from an evolutionary standpoint.

zenlikethat 10y ago
Yup, that's why we like sweet food, because once upon a time it was few and far between, so you darn well better eat it when you come across it.
- nemo44x 10y ago
  Even more than that it is believed by many. The idea being humans evolved to enjoy sweet for the reasons you pointed out - it means carbohydrates which are dense in calories. Humans evolved to enjoy a certain amount of salt as it is essential to our survival; bitterness tends to be found in toxic things and is generally not palatable as a last warning to avoid ingesting bad food; Sour can be enjoyable but it also signals under ripe fruit and rotten meats as well as dangerous acid levels in some instances. Umami is thought to encourage the consumption of important amino acids. It makes sense that earlier ancestors who maybe found bitter very enjoyable and sweetness not so enjoyable died off from a lack of calories or eating poisonous things before reproducing. And it makes sense that while across cultures people eat very different foods, you see the same patterns in terms of umami and sweet being considered desirable and bitterness often rejected. In fact the human tongue is considerably more complex than traditionally assumed. For example, besides the umami taste receptors recently proven to exist there are also studies looking to see if we have taste receptors for "fat", "starch" and even "metallic" flavors, among other things. The chemical reaction between molecules and how the brain decodes the signals produced by them is fascinating when it comes to the flavor of things.

fredley 10y ago

Humans will risk death to ingest or otherwise put things in their body, but not usually because they're tasty, usually because they're addictive. Do dolphins get high on octopus?

Nadya 10y ago
Some potentially deadly foods are considered a tasty delicacy. See, fugu [0]. Which can be really, really really poisonous [1]. It makes cyanide seem harmless in comparison. Although I just learned from Wikipedia that apparently we figured out how to raise non-poisonous pufferfish. Neat. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugu [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrodotoxin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrodotoxin
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Apparently people occasionally choke on live octopus (which is served in Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San-nakji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San-nakji ).
  - clairity 10y ago
    you can get that in koreatown in LA as well (probably elsewhere too but that's where i've had it). the taste is pretty subtle but it's weird that it squirms in your mouth.
- eru 10y ago
  I had fugu. Taste was OK. I didn't die. Perhaps it's only worth eating for the thrill?
  - gozur88 10y ago
    It's a competition of sorts. There used to be people where I work who would one-up each other on spicy food. They were long past the point where you could actually taste anything but the "heat", but they wanted to see who could take the most punishment. I have a Japanese friend who explained the fugu thing to me (at least, the way he saw it). Every once in awhile a group of people die when they eat fugu that's not prepared properly. So when you go out with your colleagues you try to work the latest such incident into the conversation, and then you order fugu. The goal is to eat it with the supreme nonchalance while trying to make your coworkers visibly nervous.

SilasX 10y ago

"Why does my cat keep bringing back dead mice? He doesn't need to hunt, I give him all the food he needs!" 'Why do you keep having sex? You already have all the kids you want!'

circlefavshape 10y ago

Or hunting something dangerous is just fun?

vinchuco 10y ago
Do they compete for the same food?

glenstein 10y ago

>I know anthropomorphizing animals is a no-no these days Well, I think you are making a good point here, so I wouldn't write it off on that basis. In the rush to avoid anthropomorphizing animals, people sometimes go to the opposite extreme and assume that things like "taste" are uniquely, exclusively human experiences and can't be extended to animals. That seems to attribute full ownership of a category of experience to humans, and to me that kind of assumption is more problematic, if we're talking about the excesses of anthropocentrism. I think your explanation makes perfect sense.

m_fayer 10y ago
Any dog owner can tell you stories of the lengths to which animals will go for food that they find particularly tasty.
- pc86 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure my dog would kill me if he thought there was a quarter tablespoon of peanut butter inside my skull.
- rayboy1995 10y ago
  Yes, my dog loves cheese. He will kill for cheese.

maxxxxx 10y ago

I have seen dolphins swim in the wake of a ship and I strongly believe they did it just for the kick of it. Maybe they showed off to the dolphin girls, who knows?

pvaldes 10y ago

I think reading the article that the risk is much overstated for sexy story-telling purposes. Dolphins of course do not choke if their mouth is full or blocked. They breath by the spiracle in the top of their head.