
Dolphins learn from their peers to use empty shells to catch fish - skipnup
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)30756-9
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aritmo
Such complex social behaviors are taught from generation to generation.

And makes even more important the need for conservation to protect pods of
dolphins so that they do not lose this collective knowledge. If these pods
gets destroyed, then other pods have to figure out the technique from scratch.

Apart from humans, some whales go into menopause. The evolutionary benefit is
to have experienced females help raise their grandchildren and pass knowledge
to them. This makes it even more important to protect older animals.

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pcl
This article discusses peer (“horizontal”) learning of the technique. They
distinguish this from parent-child (“vertical”) learning and older-younger
non-parental (“oblique”) learning.

Certainly protection of pods is important in this case as well, but the
interesting thing here is not the fact that the behavior is learned, but that
it is learned from a peer. Evidently this is the first such finding in toothed
whales.

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skipnup
The video linked in the article gives a nice overview and shows videos of
different foraging techniques used by dolphins.

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pengaru
They also pass Puffer Fish around as a form of social recreational drug use

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE7ZCQzNiJU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE7ZCQzNiJU)

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082349872349872
There was an interlude in _Women 's Work: The First 20,000 Years_ about
reconstruction of early societies by their vocabulary, using reconstructed
_root words_ from Uralic:

"So we can imagine them sitting around the campfire of an evening in larger
groups, making and mending tools and wraps while they swapped interesting
stories of their adventures, of their _friends or comrades_ and of the women's
_suitors_. Sometimes people would _wrangle_ , _admonish_ , or _curse_ and
sometimes _get high_. But they also knew how to _give presents_ and
_distribute goods_."

I'm pretty sure female dolphins have _suitors_ , and these _friends or
comrades_ are said to _get high_. Do dolphins _give presents_?

[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/10/dolphins-
sex...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/10/dolphins-sex-mating-
sponges-courtship/)

Do you even shell, pod-mate?

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xtiansimon
Well. That's the definition of a meme.

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Tepix
If only we could teach them to read and write...

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unfunco
We'd need to invent some sort of ink that worked underwater first.

