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[igotthisguitar]

Dolphin "Appears" To Guide Whales To Safety
By RAY LILLEY, Associated Press Writer
Wed Mar 12, 5:42 PM ET

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Most days, Moko the bottlenosed dolphin swims playfully with humans at a New Zealand beach. But this week, it seems, Moko found his mojo. Witnesses described Wednesday how they saw the dolphin swim up to two stranded whales and guide them to safety.

Before Moko arrived, rescue workers had been working for more than an hour to get two pygmy sperm whales, a mother and her calf, back out to sea after they were stranded Monday off Mahia Beach, said Conservation Department worker Malcolm Smith.

But Smith said the whales restranded themselves four times on a sandbar slightly out to sea from the beach, about 300 miles northeast of the capital, Wellington.
It looked likely they would have to be euthanized to prevent a prolonged death, he said.

"They kept getting disorientated and stranding again," said Smith, who was among the rescuers. "They obviously couldn't find their way back past (the sandbar) to the sea."

Then along came Moko, who approached the whales and appeared to lead them as they swam 200 yards along the beach and through a channel out to the open sea.

"Moko just came flying through the water and pushed in between us and the whales," Juanita Symes, another rescuer, told The Associated Press. "She got them to head toward the hill, where the channel is. It was an amazing experience."

Anton van Helden, a marine mammals expert at New Zealand's national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa, said the reports of Moko's rescue were "fantastic" but believable because the dolphins have "a great capacity for altruistic activities."

These included evidence of dolphins protecting people lost at sea, and their playfulness with other animals.

"But it's the first time I've heard of an inter-species refloating technique. I think that's wonderful," said van Helden, who was not involved in the rescue but spoke afterward to Smith.

http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news?ei=UTF-8&p=moko+dolphin&rs=0

[arjuna]

If the monkeys who call themselves humans correctly recognized what they truly were, they would treat the cetacians with reverence.

[Czarjorge]

What are you suggesting here, Got To Go? That the whales and dolphins should have been made into spam?

[stevemcgarrett]

Dearest igotthisguitar,

Here's hoping you'll take a walk to that polluted beach on the west coast of the Korean peninsula, swim out with your Korean lover, and be courageously escorted by a school of dolphins to Indonesia, where you will forever become stranded on one of its thousands of uninhabitated little islands, far away from an Internet connection.

[igotthisguitar]

[VanIslander]

[Adventurer]

I really like dolphins, and I think that many times we think we humans are above animals, but, in actuality, many animals like this dolphin are quite righteous beings it seems...

[Arthur Dent]

I worked as a whale watching guide in BC for several years, and during that time, I witnessed several incidents where Orca (the largest member of the dolphin family) attacked their smaller cousins, the Harbour porpoise (not a true dolphin - but close enough) and played with them as if they were volleyballs. Many tourists and naturalists (including extremely well read and experienced marine biologists) witnessed these kinds of attacks.

I should make clear here that there are several known kinds of Orca (or Killer Whale as they have - erroneously - been named). In the area I am referring to (The Pacific Coast of North America, Orca are found in every ocean in the world), there are four groups; The Southern residents - they mostly range around the Southern half of Vancouver Island and Puget Sound, but travel as far south as California and Northern Vancouver island, they are strictly fish eaters, almost exclusively salmon; The Northern Residents, again fish eaters , who range up into Alaskan waters and occasionally down into Southern Vancouver Island; The Transient Orca, mammal eaters who feed on seals, elephant seals, other whales; the rarely seen seen Offshore Orca's about which little is known, save that they are fish eaters.


The fish eating variety generally stays true to the idyllic image of the dolphin but, as I have mentioned, occasionally strays from this behaviour.
The only explanation seemed to be that they were using the porpoise as a training tool for the younger whales - of which there were several in the area - in the interests of refining their hunting techniques.

The meat eating variety is less friendly towards whale watchers (the residents are known for their friendly behaviour towards humans and often approach boats - several very young whales came right up to the boat one day and vocalized at us on the surface from mere feet away!) and it is obvious that one would not want to be in the water when they are near. They have pursued seals and sea lions while being observed by several boatloads of tourists, and these animals were so terrified that they climbed up on the swim grid and one even tried to take over a passengers seat.

In addition to the Harbour porpoise, there is the Dall's porpoise in the area. Very playful, and gregarious in their interactions with the vessels, except when they have had enough and simply want to hunt or rest. Another species in these waters is the Pacific White Sided Dolphin. These move in very large groups of dozens and more often up to a hundred or more. Even more playful and acrobatic than their black and white "cousins" the Dall's Porpoise, they literally leap clear of the water and will surround a boat vocalizing loudly the entire time.

Anyway, to conclude, the lesson I learned over the years was that the behaviour we witnessed could be interpreted in any number of ways, and often was. Anthropomorphizing was the typical reaction to any unexplained behaviour. People believed what they wanted to believe. All of these animals are very intelligent, as well as playful and curious. However, experts in the field have yet to find factually based evidence for altruistic behaviour in marine mammals. They simply do not think the way we do. It is not in their survival interests to behave this way. Their culture - although evident in other behaviours - does not include the same kind of logical processes found in humans.
We are currently the only species on the planet known to possess this ability. The physiology of their brains and other observable behaviour indicates that though they are very intelligent, we are the most intelligent species on the planet. I hasten to add that, despite this fact, intelligence itself is far from being a proven asset in terms of the survivability of our species - as any casual observer would agree. After all, there are many species which exist alongside us today which also lived alongside the dinosaurs - such as mosquitoes and sharks.
The animal in this news report may have been helpful, but it is more likely that they were simply curious. The whales, obviously in their own habitat, still managed to get themselves in trouble (not incidentally, this may be caused by human activities such as pollution - sonar affects many species adversely, as does chemical pollution, with regard to their navigation abilities) and the dolphin, passing by, simply wanted to know what all the fuss was about.

However, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing these animals on a daily basis. Although we had many great guests who were interested and intelligent as well as well-behaved and reasonable, there were days when their behaviour and understanding was so dismal - despite the efforts of other naturalists and skippers - that they could not be taught to appreciate much of anything. Some, upon returning to the harbor would ask: "What kind of whales were those again?"

On these days, I preferred the company of the whales and dolphins. In fact, I began to fantasize about how I could do tours without any other people on board and still earn a salary....sadly, I never found a way...whales and dolphins do not eat humans.... at least not on porpoise...

[stevemcgarrett]

Great post, Arthur, and one that should be added to a sticky thread of great posts if the MODS and others were so inclined.

And that really is my own porpoise in responding.

[Arthur Dent]

lol. Thanks mcgarett. I couldn't resist...I see you couldn't either. I just wanted to add a couple of other comments and observations here.

Although it has not been shown without a doubt that marine mammals are capable of altruistic behaviour, it is important to note the distinction between the human definition of the term and its motivations (studies have been done on this by anthropologists as well sociologists and psychologists - which I am interested in but not qualified to comment on in detail) which seems to have to do with guilt in some respects - a 'virtue' of our as yet not fully understood form of consciousness - and whatever the cetacean form of that is, or might be. It just gets deeper and more convoluted from there on in.

In addition, there have been reports of incidents where dolphins have 'interfered' in attacks on mariners (or 'drifting humans') by sharks. Sharks are a noted enemy of dolphins so it is difficult to know the motivation here. It seems possible that mammals have the capacity for more of an affinity for each other than with non-mammals. I don't mean to imply that all mammals are friends, simply that there may be something at work here which allows for greater commonality. An opposite example of this would be our traditional fear of animals such as snakes and scorpions as well as spiders. Of course, the justifiable fear of the big cats, as one example, seems to repudiate this notion.

To further muddy the waters, there was a book published many years ago in which a family survived the sinking of their sailboat off the coast of South America. They claimed that they were repeatedly rammed by a group of killer whales. (I forgot to mention that the misnomer here is due to a translation error which would more accurately read 'whale killer' - you can find evidence of the truth of this description in literature - for example in Laurens Van Der Posts' work "Yet Being Someone Other" as well as far back in Greek literature - sorry, no reference for this last) From my experience, I would suggest that these whales would have been of the mammal eating variety famous in the National Geographic video of some years ago - filmed taking seals off an island beach in the waters of Argentina.

Speculation must immediately arise that behaviour is related to diet. Care must be taken when making these kinds of broad generalizations. We cannot state that vegetarians - of whichever variety (strict, fish eating, seafood eating, etc.) - are incapable of violence. People make dietary choices for various practical and personal reasons which may have nothing to do with a species capacity for violence, or its instinct for survival.
And anyways, this kind of value judgment does not necessarily cross the species barrier for behaviour, nor correlate to humanity's ever changing and complex system of morality - as influenced as it is by so many factors.

A fascinating subject, as it involves cross-referencing from so many 'different' fields of study. I wonder if it has not been a mistake to separate the sciences from each other, and the humanities from the sciences....but I would not be the first to suggest this.

And, oddly, we haven't even broached the subject of language in marine mammals, as it relates to this incident.....

[igotthisguitar]

Hi Arthur ...

Thank for the comments.

i didn't happen to catch whether you reckon Dolphins can speak Whale?

Can whales communicate with dolphins?

Chalk this "altruistic" incident all up to mere "coincidence"?

I would imagine some "scientists" would feel so inclined

Does ... not ... compute



Any thought on the "burning" issue of NAVY SONAR, & how it impacts these stupid creatures' well-being?

Metta.

[stevemcgarrett]

Ah, I see, IGTG, another selection from "The New Age Book of the Moment Club," eh?

Arthur:

Again, it's fascinating stuff. I wonder what recent Navy research has found out about dolphin language and use of sonar?

[Arthur Dent]

Hmmmm..... Can dolphins speak whale....? I have listened to both dolphins and whales of several varieties and the pitch and tone is quite varied. Once you have heard a particular variety of marine mammal communicating a few times, there is no mistaking it for another animal. Orca (the residents in particular in my experience) actually make a "raspberry" sound when they are unimpressed with something - often this has been when a vessel or another whale is behaving inappropriately. When they are excited, the sounds are of a high pitched squealing variety - such as when they encounter members from the same group (I should explain here that the Southern residents are made up of three separate families which have been assigned the letter's J, K, and L, for ease of identification. Then each whale is assigned an individual number as well as a name. For example J1 is a male orca named Ruffles because of his rippled dorsal fin, which makes him easy to identify) whom they have not seen for some time.

The whales often split up into the three groups over the winter season because of the nature of their prey, the 5 main species of salmon on the coast, so that they may spread out and not concentrate their hunting in one area when the salmon are more often away from the inner waters of BC and Washington State. They then return to the San Juan Islands area and Georgia Straight as the salmon (each species of salmon has a different run time - and each river or stream as well) make their way home to spawn. When all three groups (again this is the Southern resident group) come together, they actually line up in their family groups and approach in a ceremonial fashion, which turns into a circle and then a general eruption of squealing and breaching which is remarkable to see. Often this is when interbreeding occurs.

I mention all of this because the dolphin family (and porpoises as well) are a fairly high-strung natured animal, and it shows in their behaviour as well as in the way they use sound (by the way I have had friends who have felt the sonar move through their bodies when whales have come through the area whilst they were diving in non whale related activities, and they have said it was a very powerful and invasive feeling) so my point is that their language - mostly indecipherable if one is looking at it from the perspective of human languages (semantics, semiotics) - is emotional in nature. It is not as complex as ours but it does not need to be.

It serves their purposes ( I resisted temptation here...).

I would be surprised if the different varieties of marine mammals can communicate with each other, after all, I cannot speak chimpanzee, gorillese, nor orangutanese. However, if a dog is growling, it does not take much imagination for me to understand how it is feeling. I would guess that these animals, living in a world of sound as they do, have learned what is necessary to survive in terms of the sounds they hear from other animals. In other words, being an emotional language, it is likely well within the bounds of possibility that different marine mammals can interpret sounds of distress from each other, simply based on their experience.

What they choose to do about it and why, are different questions, and as yet, unanswered so far as I am aware - at least in terms of proof and not theory. But, I am not an expert by any means.

I am a little unsure how to respond as far as your "in parentheses" comments are concerned. Are you being facetious? Or do you have a lack confidence in science? If it is the latter, I am not surprised. This seems to be common these days, with all the problems we face, and our desire to find someone or something to blame. However, it is not science that is to blame but rather how responsibly we use it. Bad science is simply science used for ill purposes or a perversion or inaccurate methodology in its use.

Science, at its simplest, is merely a method for discovering the physical laws of the universe. Often, the problem faced by the public is a poor understanding of its methodology and the present complexity of various applications as well as its various branches. When people become frustrated with trying to understand something at this level they resort to a more instinctive and emotional understanding of the world, which, while inaccurate, is more comforting. Hence, Religion. Not a criticism, just an observation, and one that has been expressed throughout history.

I cannot, of course, comment effectively on how any or all scientists are inclined as far as this incident is concerned. But I will say this. A good scientist seeks to understand, not to attach themselves obsessively to what they want to believe. This leads people to believe that scientists are unfeeling and dispassionate. The distinction that is vital to make here is that scientists should be dispassionate and unbiased in pursuing their quest for understanding (while maintaining a passion for what they are interested in, a contradiction of the ultimate sort I would imagine) but still remain compassionate and feeling individuals in their personal lives.

(People - and I would agree with this entirely - want scientists to be both discoverers and compassionate at once. They want them to be "moral." Unfortunately, these are often contradictory. Morality is subjective, and not objective. They do not want them to dispel notions that they hold dearly to a personal way.)

Success in this is varied, I would imagine, but for an interesting foray into this area I would recommend both "Galileo's Daughter" and "The Reluctant Mr. Darwin" as books which examine the ideas and lives of both these interesting and influential men. Didn't someone once say this? - "I reserve the right to hold two contradictory ideas in my head at once and hold both to be true"? Or something along these lines?

As far as Stephen Talbott is concerned, I cannot claim to have read his work. However, by reputation, I would suggest he is not the best writer in terms of exploring ideas of this sort. Feynman and Sagan are more to my liking. I especially recommend reading "The Demon Haunted World: Science as Candle in the Dark"
by Carl Sagan. It is exemplary in its clarity and understanding of both science and humanity's views of it.

With regard to the Navy's use of sonar (mainly the US Navy I would suppose, as it would seem to be the most advanced in this area, except perhaps for the Russians and maybe the French and British) it would seem that they have chosen to disregard the well-being of these animals, in favor of national interests. There have been numerous reports of stranding s after the Navy has experimented with very powerful sonar equipment. Particularly near Hawaii I believe.

Humpbacks used to be able to communicate from one one side of the ocean to the other - according to research I have come across. With the increased ship traffic, it seems that this is no longer possible. Cause and Effect. One of the oldest and most well known learned methods or principles for understanding our world and still used by scientists today.

Not sure what to make of your 'stupid creatures' comment. Is intelligence really the prime requisite for respecting a form of life? Even stupid people have a reasonable expectation of respect from others, so long as they do not compromise others. I may respect intelligent people more than dumb ones but it doesn't necessarily follow that I will like them more. This is why I like to read books about people which combine examining their lives as well as their ideas. Otherwise, how can I make it relevant to my life? In addition, it teaches one the true cost of new ideas and the hardships which come with being a proponent of them. In many cases, very important ideas came, very unwillingly, from reluctant individuals. It is the arrogant ones I dislike.

No idea what you mean by metta.

By the way, if you are ever in Victoria, Sydney, Tofino, Campbell River or
Ucluelet, on Vancouver Island, I would highly recommend a trip on a whale watching boat. Many, if not, in fact, all, of the staff of each company are very passionate about protecting these animals and are extremely interested and willing to discuss any of the issues and debates surrounding marine mammals and the oceans in general. Passion and reason in combination with science are powerful tools.

[Arthur Dent]

Hi mcgarett, posted the last before I saw your comment. I know that the discovery of sonar came through the study of cetaceans and bats as well. The navy has doubtless used dolphins in particular to learn more about this powerful force. I am certain that much of what it has learned remains top secret.

I also know that they have tried to train dolphins as weapon delivery systems.

I met a navy fellow whose friend spent much of his time listening to whales. Apparently he got so good at it that he could identify each separate individual from the most frequent visitors to the area. This is also true of whale researchers however. There are listening stations on the north coast of the island near Port McNeill. This is close to the famous rubbing beaches of Robson Bight.

It may be that the navy has developed weapons which use sonar to disable enemy divers or perhaps even some technological hardware. Of course sound underwater (or anywhere) can be a powerful disabling weapon against humans. It is very easy to blow out someone's eardrums with a grenade or any other explosives.

No idea what else they may have learned in terms of language.

I fear to say more might expose me to unwanted scrutiny....

[arjuna]

Whales look on humans as benevolent humans might look on rabid dogs.

Such a pity! They do not know themselves. They have forgotten their greatness. Satisfied with their clever "intellect," which are but rearrangements of rigid thought forms, and convinced of their status as the highest form of intelligence, they blithely engage in "spiritual" and "scientific" and "progressive" activities which lead them inexorably to self-destruction. Yet, retaining their link to the universe still, they are puzzled and sometimes amazed by us. They want to know if we are intelligent and can "communicate," and if we have "language." Poor amusing fools! Why don't they just ask us? We would tell them all about what we are and what we know, and about what we have been doing for them over millennia, even though they have collectively treated us with indifference at best.