
Dolphins' elaborate octopus-hunting strategy - shawndumas
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/new-study-reveals-dolphins-flinging-octopuses-into-the-air/
======
mmjaa
I've seen Octopus using tools.

I'm from south-west Australia (where these dolphins were observed) and grew up
swimming along the coast, scuba and snorkelling to much delight.

Once, in a little sand hole near Yanchep, I was floating around on a
particularly hot day, when I thought I saw a crayfish just lolling around on
the ocean floor. Diving deeper to get a closer look, I realised it was just
the head of the crayfish, long-since hollowed out, albeit with a bit of flesh
still onboard.

I took an even closer look, and what I thought was a bit of weed attached to
it was actually a long, slender tentacle, which I followed back to a minuscule
hole in the rocky sand, and therein I spotted the rest of the octopus.

Delighted, I stuck around for a while to watch.

The octopus was fishing! It held out the cray corpse just a little, out in the
currents, waiting patiently for the stupid little white fish to come and try
to nail a bite!

When a particularly dumb little fish got its fangs in, BAM! Out came another
tentacle, fast as light, and snatched that dumb fish into the hole. All the
while, the original bait tentacle continued to just lull about, swinging and
swaying, getting those dumb fish even closer and closer, ever more
tantalising.

I stayed and watched it all day - it apparently had a nearly-insatiable
hunger, or maybe it was just really enjoying itself. To my dying days, I'll
never forget that clever little cephalopod ..

~~~
max_
May be zoologists have been underestimating the intelligence of mollusks

~~~
macintux
We've known for a while that octopuses are surprisingly intelligent. Great
read: [https://orionmagazine.org/article/deep-
intellect/](https://orionmagazine.org/article/deep-intellect/)

(tl;dr: don't eat octopus!)

~~~
TuringTest
I was wary of eating octopus, but fell relieved now, knowing that dolphins
also love them as delicatessen. :-P

~~~
phpnode
delicacy - a delicatessen is somewhere you'd buy delicacies

~~~
drumttocs8
It's both...

~~~
phpnode
Not in English as far as I'm aware.

~~~
TuringTest
Dunno, Merriam-Webster list it as both,[1] though from your comment I get that
it is most commonly understood as the store. Thanks for the tip though, I was
only aware of the food meaning.

[1] [https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/delicatessen](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/delicatessen)

~~~
phpnode
Perhaps it depends where you are, Oxford English Dictionary only mentions the
shop meaning.

~~~
TuringTest
Weird! :-O

This is what I get:

1: ready-to-eat food products (as cooked meats and prepared salads)

2: sing, pl delicatessens [delicatessen (store)] : a store where delicatessen
are sold

~~~
roywiggins
It's fine as a modifier ("it's a delicatessen salad") but not on its own
("it's a delicatessen")

~~~
mrkgnao
_Delicatessen_ is also plural in German if you use it to mean "delicacy",
instead of an adjective ("chai tea"-style).

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sevensor
I once saw fresh octopus prepared at a seaside barbecue place. The first thing
the octopus did after the cook grabbed it from the kiddie pool full of
seawater was to wrap its tentacles around her forearm. Before it could get too
firm of a grip, she threw it down on the concrete floor with a loud smack and
disassembled it with a cleaver while it was still stunned. It was pretty
intense. I can see why the dolphins would have a complex strategy for dealing
with the much larger octopus they consume.

Now that it's become clear that the octopus is an intelligent creature capable
of solving problems and making plans, I'm going to eat less sophisticated
mollusks and leave octopus to the dolphins.

~~~
qyv
Dolphins, which are another highly intelligent species, don't seem to have any
qualms about eating octopus.

~~~
db48x
Yes, but we don't eat dolphin because we regard them as too intelligent
(unless they spend all their money on the lottery).

~~~
bluGill
We do eat dolphin. Mahi mahi type of dolphin, I buy it at Costco: it is good.

~~~
Fezzik
for clarity, though sometimes called a "dolphin", mahi mahi is a fish, not in
the Mammalia class, like an actual Dolphin... so they are quite different.

~~~
tropo
I've seen it labeled "dolphin". I asked the seller if it was really dolphin,
and he said yes, so I bought it. It tasted suspiciously like fish. :-(

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tetraodonpuffer
> It's still unclear why dolphins are willing to risk so much for such a small
> meal.

maybe it's just they like the taste? it's not like we don't go out of our own
way to find some delicacies just because we are in the mood for them.

I know anthropomorphizing animals is a no-no these days, but trying to explain
everything based on "nutritional value" seems a bit narrow minded...

~~~
fredley
Humans will risk death to ingest or otherwise put things in their body, but
not usually because they're tasty, usually because they're addictive.

Do dolphins get high on octopus?

~~~
Nadya
Some potentially deadly foods are considered a tasty delicacy. See, fugu [0].
Which can be really, really really poisonous [1]. It makes cyanide seem
harmless in comparison.

Although I just learned from Wikipedia that apparently we figured out how to
raise non-poisonous pufferfish. Neat.

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

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrodotoxin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrodotoxin)

~~~
maxerickson
Apparently people occasionally choke on live octopus (which is served in Korea
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San-nakji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San-
nakji) ).

~~~
clairity
you can get that in koreatown in LA as well (probably elsewhere too but that's
where i've had it). the taste is pretty subtle but it's weird that it squirms
in your mouth.

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custos
This makes me think of primitive humans working together to kill large animals
for food.

Super dangerous and only possible when working together.

Perhaps one day, thousands of years from now, technologically advanced
dolphins will one day watch us doing the same thing again, and they will have
a similar article about us!

~~~
npongratz
> Perhaps one day, thousands of years from now, technologically advanced
> dolphins will one day watch us doing the same thing again, and they will
> have a similar article about us!

I'd be curious to know how much of human technical advancement was thanks to
the ability to relatively easily smelt metal, and whether the inability to
easily smelt underwater creates an impediment to technical advancement of
species living underwater.

~~~
stcredzero
Seawater also plays hell with ropes and hide. You can't construct with stone,
because it sinks to the bottom, and the silty bottom is a rotten foundation.
You can't build with wood because it floats away, it will soften and weather
quickly, and things will eat it quickly. You can't wear tools, as that ruins
your streamlining, and fast swimmers will generate high drag forces on
anything they wear.

The ocean isn't a good place for tool building!

~~~
landryraccoon
Perhaps in a future age, spacefaring civilizations will say the same thing
about primitive life forms living at the bottom of gravity wells. How can you
get anywhere with so much gravity holding you down?

~~~
stcredzero
You can still build edged tools, weapons, clocks, and computers at the bottom
of a gravity well. Being aquatic is completely different -- the environment
often keeps you from evolving manipulators for building tools. Even if you
evolve the manipulators, the environment automatically degrades the value of
the tools.

------
awjr
>Sprogis and colleagues muse that the nutritional value of an octopus must be
"substantial." Or, as marine biologist Holly Bik points out at Deep Sea News,
maybe it's just that "dolphins are a$$holes."

Best line from the article :D

~~~
quotha
or the worst line

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londons_explore
It seems surprising that an octopus leg hitting the oceans surface 15 times
kills it.

I can't imagine that a dolphin can throw an octopus leg at more than 15-20
mph, and at that kind of speed I wouldn't imagine damage to a soft bodied
creature.

I would imagine a better technique to be to leave the octopus legs for 10
minutes for lack of bloodflow to kill it. Wonder why they don't do that? Too
hard to defend a bleeding morsel of food from other predators?

~~~
garaetjjte
>I would imagine a better technique to be to leave the octopus legs for 10
minutes for lack of bloodflow to kill it.

Arms work even 1h after cutting off: [http://moscow.sci-
hub.cc/58b56284136af39dc0eaf7491b31d759/ha...](http://moscow.sci-
hub.cc/58b56284136af39dc0eaf7491b31d759/hague2013.pdf)

~~~
0xfeba
Interesting survival technique, if I can assume it is. The octopus in question
dies but the dolphin who tried to eat it does also. Serves as a warning to
dissuade eating the species/order as a whole. Same as poisoned toads in that
regard, just a little more zombie-like.

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zeristor
David Brin's series the "Uplift War" had a backdrop to human's raising the
intelligence of a number of Earth origin animals.

How I wish he had the human society uplift the Octopus instead of the expected
mammals.

~~~
astrodust
They would've taken over the world!

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Cpoll
It's not clear to me that they're "risking death."

The article reveals that dolphins can be killed trying to eat octopus in a
more conventional fashion, but I don't see any "risk" involved with their
throwing method.

~~~
khedoros1
What about if they don't throw it enough times to stun it? Or if that
particular octopus is particularly stun-resistant? Or if the dolphin hesitates
at some point in the grab-and-throw maneuver, giving the legs a chance to grab
on to its face, mouth, or throat? It seems like there would be a lot of
opportunities for error.

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xHopen
The full article is just amazing,
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mms.12405/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mms.12405/full)
I love and fear dolphins at the same time

I will totally continue eating octopus

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munificent
I'm probably missing something obvious, but... why don't the dolphins just
chew their food better?

~~~
astrodust
They don't chew. Chewing is what land animals who eat leafy plants do.

They can bite, and that's about it. Do these look like chewing teeth?
[http://4everstatic.com/pictures/674xX/animals/aquatic-
life/d...](http://4everstatic.com/pictures/674xX/animals/aquatic-
life/dolphin,-teeth-190821.jpg)

~~~
munificent
Ah, of course. That makes sense. :)

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itchyjunk
I thought the brain:body size rank was Humans, chimp then dolphins but looks
like I am wrong about it[0].

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

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gigatexal
The octopus and likely the dolphin is probably much smarter than we give them
credit for. On a whim one day I studied the octopus and finding them majestic
and so smart I stopped eating them. The kicker was when I learned that female
octopus when giving birth find a rock out of sight of predators and spend
their last days and minutes doing nothing (no eating etc) but waiting for the
next generation to birth and then they subsequently die. It was moving.

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telesilla
I've seen this behaviour with seals when kayaking. Fascinating to watch, and I
swear they were just showing off to us bunch of humans hanging out enthralled
by the sight of a large seal slamming the octopus over and over again against
the water until it was dead enough to disappear with back into the deep.

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awinter-py
Hmm -- I didn't think dolphin airways were connected to their digestive
system.

~~~
wungsten
You're right, they're not. I wonder what the cause of death was, then.

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mzzter
"Art of the octopus smackdown" haha very colorful writing

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hellofunk
One more reason why I realize how similar I am to a dolphin. You have no idea
how many times I have risked my life so I too could eat octopus.

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metricodus
I would like to challenge my hard-core religious physics and biology teacher
from 7th grade with this evidence. He kept giving me as low a grade as what
was acceptable, while I still aced pretty much every test. (Sweden. Småland.
90s. I don't think this is an issue for todays kids.)

