
Dolphins often seem to want to befriend us - pshaw
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/dolphins-often-seem-to-want-to-befriend-us--do-they-know-something-we-dont-10493809.html
======
junto
My first real interaction with dolphins was sailing around the UK on a tall
ship (STS Malcolm Miller) about 25 years ago.

As we sailed around Land's End, a pod of dolphins started playing around the
boat. I want on watch, so I lay face down in the net below the bowsprit and
watched them play for over an hour.

They were like surfers lining up at a breach break. There were rules. Each
took their turn to ride the waves coming off the front of the ship. They were
having fun. They had the time to just enjoy themselves. You could imagine one
saying to the other, "gnarly dude. That drop in was sweet! You owned that
wave".

At that point I saw the similarity between humans and dolphins. They are at
the top of their food chain and food is plentiful. They don't have to spend
the entire day hunting and eating like so many other animals. So this gives
them time. Time to learn, time to play and time to socialise.

Awesome animals.

~~~
LightMachine
Are dolphins on the top of the food chain? I thought they were predated by
whales and sharks?

~~~
junto
True, but but the great white shark is also hunted by killer whales, but I
think you would probably consider the great white shark to be at the to of the
food chain. Humans don't fair too well against a number of large predators
either all things being equal.

Let's rephrase it to be "pretty much the pinnacle of the food chain".

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Asimov wrote an article about that myth - that humans were some poor
vulnerable mammal through history, using its wits to survive against apex
predators.

Turns out, through history, humans were apex predators. We don't live in the
ocean; sharks and whales are not preying upon us. In other ecosystems, humans
rarely if ever met other apex predators. We were the top of the heap
historically in almost every environment we occupied. Pretty much.

That said, I remember reading recently about 6 or 8 human skeletons being
found in a saber-toothed tiger den, 80,000 years old, being excavated
somewhere.

~~~
marcosdumay
If you mean Homo Sapiens, yes, we've been apex predators for all our history.

Now if you mean hominids, no, for most of our history he've been prey. Even
for a while after the Homo gender appeared.

------
apryldelancey
I've spent most of my life in the ocean as a scuba diver/surfer and have
encountered dolphins many times. They're just like humans in terms of
personality. Some are cool, some are jerks. For example, I was surfing alone
on the north side of a jetty and there was a pod that was swimming close by.
One of them started slapping it's tail at the surface. This is a sign of
aggression so I got out of the water and moved to another spot. Another time I
was surfing about 200 yards north of a pier with one other person. We were
circled by a dolphin that seemed quite playful that suddenly bumped the back
of my board and then jumped out of the water over me. I've had another jump
over me when I was paddling toward the wave and it was riding through it as
they have been observed doing many times. If there is a juvenile with a pod I
definitely keep my distance. Mama dolphin does not want to be friends with any
human that comes near her baby. Quite the contrary, they will get very
aggressive to protect their young. Additionally, I have seen my share of
sharks and pinnipeds. Just last week a pinniped surfaced next to me and then
came at me and grabbed my surfboard leash. Of course, I let out a little
shriek since I wasn't expecting it but it quickly let go. I've had them follow
me more than once. They've swam alongside me as I was paddling out and have
surfaced right in front of me. I've had juvenile white sharks (4-5 feet) swim
by curiously as well. Many of these encounters can be taken as the animal
wanting "to be my friend". By the way, orcas are actually more a dolphin than
a whale as they are in the Delphinidae family.

~~~
wsc981
The story of the Killer Whales of Eden, Australia was interesting. These
killer whales hunted their prey with the humans, shared the loot and the
killer whales even protected a human if they fell into the water.

[http://www.killersofeden.com](http://www.killersofeden.com)

~~~
apryldelancey
Cool, thanks for the link.

------
rwhitman
If dolphins were land mammals, would we be as fascinated by this type of
cross-species social behavior?

Dolphins are certainly interesting, but if I were to worry myself with the
plight of a hyper-intelligent mammal species right now, I'd put that energy
towards concern for elephants instead. They are an intelligent species that is
actually _smarter_ than humans in some aspects and being systematically
slaughtered by poachers every day. Dolphin propeller strikes are sad, but
potential elephant extinction is a crisis

~~~
jmnicolas
"If dolphins were land mammals, would we be as fascinated by this type of
cross-species social behavior?"

I think yes. How many (untrained) animals out there are known to protect a
human in danger ? To my knowledge there are only dogs and dolphins.

~~~
pvaldes
Wolves can adopt children in fact, specially when the children cry; and
gorillas seem to be inclined to do this also with human childrens in danger or
injured, either the children moves or not. Female gorillas in zoos have been
helping boys accidentally falling or entering in the gorilla recint and
returning them to the mother. Silverbacks can participate also.

------
Animats
Well, humans are interesting to dolphins. Dolphins are reasonably intelligent
and none of the other marine life can communicate or play with them.

~~~
jjtheblunt
How would one know that? Pinnipeds seem very smart too, for example.

~~~
sea2summit
Pinnipeds are smart like dogs. Dolphins are smart like primates.

~~~
stinos
Do you have a source for this? Also, what primates exactly do you mean? There
are huge differences of _smart_ within the primate category, e.g. monkeys vs
humans.

~~~
vlehto
Humans actually. "The brain to body mass ratio in some members of the
odontocete superfamily Delphinoidea is second only to modern humans, and
greater than all other mammals"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_intelligence)

~~~
pygy_
But their neuronal density is much lower.

IIRC their high glia/neuron ratio is though to be an adaptation to sea life.

~~~
Natanael_L
Neuron interconnectivity might be more important than plain neuron count. So
that could be an advantage.

------
dcaranda
The Dolphin Embassy was a project by Berkeley art collective Ant Farm. It's
mission was to develop dolphin/human relations through the creation of a
common language and a mobile laboratory. The project received funding from the
Rockefeller Foundation and was shown at SFMOMA.

Ant Farm is considered significant as the first studio practice to incorporate
new media in its work. Thematically it looks like they were focused on the
confluence of new technology, utopian optimism and psychedelic drugs.

Iterations of the designs for the Dolphin Embassy continued into the early
2000s with a proposal for a space craft that would act as a joint dolphin-
human space colony and would contain a massive, free floating sphere of water
that would be ultra sonically stabilized.

So cool! One of my favorite art pieces!
[http://greg.org/archive/2010/06/01/cue_the_dolphin_embassy.h...](http://greg.org/archive/2010/06/01/cue_the_dolphin_embassy.html)

------
hueving
The following is something often repeated that doesn't make sense to me:

>Of course we'll find them among us: they have nowhere else to go.

The ocean makes up a majority of this planet and a tiny fraction of it is
within 20 miles of any land where most of the human activity is. Other than
major shipping routes, they have the rest to go without encountering people. I
don't know where the impression comes from that we are crowding them out.

~~~
codezero
for context, look at the range of one of their food sources, the sardine:
[http://www.chefs-resources.com/files/Sardines-Sprat-
Pilchard...](http://www.chefs-resources.com/files/Sardines-Sprat-Pilchards-
Brisling/Sardine-range.jpg)

This greatly restricts their over-all range.

To contrast dolphins, there are huge swaths of the land mass of the world with
almost no human population, and we seem to gather in certain spots for certain
reasons, most life does this, so it's not just a matter of the total volume of
the ocean vs the entire population of dolphins.

~~~
riffraff
I am confused by this image: I am 100% sure there are sardines and dolphins in
the mediterranean sea.

~~~
codezero
yeah, not perfect, probably constrained to a specific species/subspecies,
sorry about that, general point I was trying to make is that the range is not
as vast as the ocean volume :)

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superskierpat
At least theyre thankful for all the fish

------
c3534l
I skimmed this. Does the author actually make any point or come to a
conclusion other than offering anecdotes about how dolphins seem pretty
friendly to people?

Edit: sorry, I didn't mean to sound too critical.

~~~
dang
There's nothing wrong with anecdotes and observations. If they're interesting,
that's more than enough for HN.

~~~
puranjay
It's almost as if HN folks need some hard data even in their light reading.

So does it matter whether dolphins actually seek us out? I just get a kick out
of thinking they do, and this article put a smile on my face.

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mladenkovacevic
Poor misguided creatures.

~~~
7Figures2Commas
Yeah, it's a shame the dolphins seem to be so attracted to them.

~~~
bitmapbrother
That's what you call being flippered.

------
peze
It's a trap

