Sky
"The only disability in life is a bad attitude."
Scott Hamilton
Google

Tag Archives: dolphin

Wednesday, 3 June, 2009

Sharks can be cuddled like dolphins

From Telegraph.

Sharks can be trained like dolphins to feed from keepers, roll over and enjoy cuddles, according to new research.

In experiments carried out in the US some varieties of shark allowed themselves to be picked from the water and cuddled.

Keepers at the UK's Sea Life Centres will now use the training techniques in the hope that they will end up with hundreds of trained sharks.


The experts at the aquariums are to begin a period of intensive tuition by using coloured boards and sounds to train the sharks in a similar way to that used by the scientist Ivan Pavlov in training dogs.

It will mean that feeding becomes easier because each shark in a tank will know when it is their turn to feed.

The Sea Life centres have many different types of shark and within just three months the brightest ones should be responding to commands.


Sharks learn the signals then, when they see or hear them, they approach the keeper who holds a "target stick".

The sharks then rub their noses against the stick and wait until they are fed.

No one had attempted to train sharks in this way before, but it could now teach experts a great deal about the creatures.

Carey Duckhouse, of Sea Life, said: "The US team has shown that many varieties of sharks can quickly learn to respond to a combination of audible and visual signals.

"A shark answers its own sound and colour signal by putting its nose on a target-stick held by the trainer, and keeping it there until it receives food.

"Some species, such as zebra sharks, will even roll over to have their tummies scratched or allow themselves to be lifted from the water without any kind of struggle.

"The implications for improving shark welfare are enormous. It means when we have to move them we can get the sharks to swim to a certain spot rather than have to chase them around."

Related:
Just How Smart Are Dolphins?.

Tags: dolphin, shark, Fish


Posted in Animals , Science , Fish


Posted by skyleecm at 13:40 PM 1 comments

Sunday, 1 February, 2009

Dolphins prepare food like chefs before eating

From Telegraph.

The research team, writing in the science journal PLoS One, said they repeatedly observed a female dolphin herding cuttlefish out of algal weed and onto a clear, sandy patch of seafloor.

The dolphin, then pinned the cuttlefish with its snout while standing on its head, before killing it instantly with a rapid downward thrust and "loud click" audible to divers as the hard cuttlebone broke.

The dolphin then lifted the body up and beat it with her nose to drain the toxic black ink that cuttlefish squirt into the water to defend themselves when attacked.

Next the prey was taken back to the seafloor, where the dolphin scraped it along the sand to strip out the cuttlebone, making the cuttlefish soft for eating.

"It's a sign of how well their brains are developed. It's a pretty clever way to get pure calamari without all the horrible bits," Mark Norman, the curator of molluscs at Museum Victoria.

A separate 2005 study provided the first sign dolphins may be capable of group learning and using tools, with a mother seen teaching her daughters to break off sea sponges and wear them as protection while scouring the seafloor in Western Australia.

Related:
Just How Smart Are Dolphins?.

New Caledonian Crows Find Two Tools Better Than One.

Tags: dolphin, Fish, intelligence, nature


Posted in Animals , Fish , Science


Posted by skyleecm at 07:01 AM no comments

Sunday, 7 October, 2007

Amazing Pictures of a Newborn Baby Dolphin

From Daily Mail.

A bottlenose dolphin goes into labour . . . then a calf emerges, tail first. Mother guides baby gently to the surface, where they swim together for the first time.

Very few dolphin births have been captured on film in such astonishing detail.

This one was recorded at a wildlife park pool in Rimini, Italy, where photographer Leandro Stanzani was in exactly the right place at the right time.

Video: How Baby Dolphins Learn the Secrets of Survival. (National Geographic)

What effortless swimming! 8)

Related:

Just How Smart Are Dolphins?

Tags: Fish, nature, video, dolphin, Photos


Posted in Fish , Photos , Animals


Posted by skyleecm at 11:33 AM 1 comments

Wednesday, 8 August, 2007

Yangtze River Dolphin now Extinct

From BBC News.

A freshwater dolphin found only in China is now "likely to be extinct", a team of scientists has concluded. The researchers failed to spot any Yangtze river dolphins, also known as baijis, during an extensive six-week survey of the mammals' habitat.

"The Yangtze river dolphin was a remarkable mammal that separated from all other species over 20 million years ago," Dr Turvey explained. "This extinction represents the disappearance of a complete branch of the evolutionary tree of life and emphasises that we have yet to take full responsibility in our role as guardians of the planet."

Unlike most historical-era extinctions of large bodied animals, the baiji was the victim not of active persecution but incidental mortality resulting from massive-scale human environmental impacts - primarily uncontrolled and unselective fishing," the researchers concluded.

The damage to the baiji's habitat is also affecting the Yangtze finless porpoise, whose numbers have fallen to below 400, the expedition found.

Tags: nature, extinction, environment, dolphin, Fish


Posted in Fish , Animals


Posted by skyleecm at 14:05 PM 2 comments

Wednesday, 1 August, 2007

Just How Smart Are Dolphins?

From BBC - Science & Nature.

At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, Kelly the dolphin has quite a reputation. All the institute's dolphins are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. Kelly took this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool.

The next time a trainer passes, she tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish-reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on.

At Kewalo Basin Marine Laboratory in Hawaii, Lou Herman and his team have developed a sign language to communicate with the dolphins, and the results are remarkable. Not only do the dolphins understand the meaning of individual words, they also understand the significance of word order in a sentence.

Most mammals seem to enjoy play - but dolphins seem to like making their games as challenging as possible. A killer whale calf learned the trick of luring gulls to the surface of the water with fish. When the gulls landed on the water, the killer whale would then attempt to capture them in her mouth, without killing them.

Once she mastered this skill, she made the task more challenging for herself: instead of waiting for the gulls to land on the water, she tried to capture the gulls on their descent when they were more than a metre above the water surface.

Tags: dolphin, Fish


Posted in Animals , Science , Fish


Posted by skyleecm at 14:00 PM 5 comments

Tuesday, 3 July, 2007

Humpback Whale and Dolphin

From Nature's Best 2006 Image Gallery: Experience Nature Through the Art of Photography.

The dolphin was lying on a humpback whale’s head while it was slowly swimming along. Looking through my camera lens the stunt appeared to be orchestrated by mutual “agreement.” The whale very slowly—and vertically—lifted the dolphin into the air. I expected the dolphin to wriggle atop the humpback’s head to get off, but it just laid still and arched, trying to stay on top of the whale’s snout.

:)

Tags: Photos, Fish, nature, dolphin


Posted in Fish , Photos , Animals


Posted by skyleecm at 23:34 PM 7 comments