Animals & nature · 2014
Can dolphins lift food with water flow instead of touching it directly?
Yes. At Suma Aqualife Park, three of four bottlenose dolphins were observed moving food with water flow, including lifting it off the pool floor without direct body contact. This small observational study shows that these dolphins could do this, not how common the behavior is among dolphins.
Details
Moving an object does not always require touching it. Researchers observed dolphins releasing food from the sides of their mouths while pointing their heads down near the pool floor. They then moved the food around their mouths using pool currents or head movements and caught it again before swimming away.
When food fell to the floor, the dolphins generated water flow to lift it by repeatedly opening and closing their mouths, moving their heads lengthwise, or moving their heads in circles. The finding concerns the contact-free movement of food, not an entire feeding sequence without touching it: the dolphins released and caught the food with their mouths.
The authors interpreted the behavior as dolphins spontaneously changing their surroundings to move objects. They suggested that the physical properties of water might help explain this behavior, but that explanation was a hypothesis, not a tested result. The observations involved only four dolphins at one facility, with the behavior reported in three.
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