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They say in the article that “In all likelihood, they probably don’t miss humans per se. They probably miss a free meal and the routine.” and “When it’s not hap
by NineStarPoint 6y ago
They say in the article that “In all likelihood, they probably don’t miss humans per se. They probably miss a free meal and the routine.” and “When it’s not happening, maybe it’s just out of boredom.”
Which actually seems more plausible to me than food motivation. Dolphins are one of the most intelligent, social, and oftentimes pointlessly cruel animals we know of. All this points to an animal with a cognitive level capable of having been interested in humans and now being bored due to their absence. And in that boredom, having not much better to do with their time than go looking for “gifts”. It’s also possible they’re just motivated by the food of course, but ultimately I feel like a Dolphin’s mental complexity is high enough that it’s hard for us to say exactly what motivates them in complex situations.
- kitotik 6y agoAs in humans, it’s also possible that they don’t all share the exact same motivation at the exact same time.
- supernova87a 6y agoVacationing Woman Thinks Cats Miss Her https://www.theonion.com/vacationing-woman-thinks-cats-miss-her-1819565888 https://www.theonion.com/vacationing-woman-thinks-cats-miss-...
- nicoburns 6y agoThe Onion is on point as ever, but dolphins are a lot more social than cats.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ris 6y agoIf there were one onion link posted in these comments I would have expected it to be https://local.theonion.com/dolphin-spends-amazing-vacation-swimming-with-stockbrok-1819575361 https://local.theonion.com/dolphin-spends-amazing-vacation-s...
- gwern 6y agoThey probably do, though: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/cats-rival-dogs-many-tests-social-smarts-anyone-brave-enough-study-them https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/cats-rival-dogs-many...
- PakG1 6y agoWell, when I was gone on vacation, my roommate told me that my cat would sit staring at the door forever each day, as if waiting for me to come back home. He'd be in the living room watching TV and cat would be at the door. Cat didn't do that when I was home. But cat did somehow manage to be at the door right away whenever I came home from work. Reason? Who knows, but I'd like to think the cat was waiting for me. :)
- poulsbohemian 6y agoI try to not dwell on it because it makes me sad, but I had a cat I'm fairly certain knew he was sick and was basically waiting for me to get home from a vacation before he took a downturn and eventually passed. I've got four cats and the longer I have them around, the more I think there's more going on inside their little heads than the majority of people give them credit. They have good and bad days just like people.
- eggsnbacon1 6y agocruel sometimes maybe, but dolphins are also very well known for saving humans from drowning. I don't think its fair to project human characteristics onto animals, but at least some of what dolphins do is altruistic. The drowning and shark savior stories are countless, and date back to before recorded history in some cultures. Maybe they aren't so bad? There's also studies that can't find any reason they follow ship wakes besides "fun". I think they don't get as much credit as they may deserve
- kirrent 6y agoI've sailed with dolphins plenty of times. They've tended to lose interest when I was on a windsurfer or dinghy after a minute or so, no matter what speed I was doing. On the other hand, when I've been on a cruising cat, they can't seem to get enough. As long as you stay over 7 knots under sail they'll follow along apparently having great fun, particularly around and between the bows. I've even seen a large pod travelling in one direction hook a U-turn when they saw the boat to play for ten minutes before heading back in their original direction. All of this is to say what everyone else is saying. They're complex creatures with sometimes non-trivial motivations.
- keenmaster 6y agoMany animals exhibit play behavior, which has numerous benefits. The complexity of the play behavior is fairly bounded. Maybe that dolphin demonstrated an advanced form of it relative to other types of animals. The animal section of the Play wiki is interesting, especially the cognitive theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_(activity)?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_(activity)?wprov=sfti1
- tappio 6y agoDolphins don't save humans because of altruistic reasons towards our species. Their own offspring behaves similarly when drowning, and they mistake a drowning human to potentially drowning dolphin.
- danans 6y ago
- perl4ever 6y agoIt's kind of funny that whenever archaeologists find something they have no idea what it is, it's assumed to be a religious artifact, but when a fairly intelligent animal does something weird, we don't say "it must be for religious reasons"...a long time ago I read a science fiction novel that explained the lack of communication with cetaceans by their having religious sensibilities that prevented them from responding. Eventually, communication was established, but the religion was still incomprehensible to humans.