While diving in Monterey, I came across a harbor seal who had found a float on a string, anchored so the float was about 3 feet off the bottom. (It looked like it was part of some experimental aparatus.)
She was batting it around, clearly playing with it.
(Unlike other seals we ran into that day, she was uninterested in people. She reacted to us when we swam up but soon went back to playing with her toy and ignored us.)
Yeah, hmm...looking back at my comment I am not quite sure what I was getting at. Wishful thinking is probably the culprit; I like learning languages, and I think it would be awesome to learn one day to communicate intelligently with another species.
Seals aren't all that useful as shark detectors. They're usually not around and they look just like attacking sharks when they play their "swoop" game. (They find this quite funny.)
They also play "hide", which often consists of putting their head behind a rock and peeking around to make sure that you're coming by. Yup, they leave their huge body exposed.
She was batting it around, clearly playing with it.
(Unlike other seals we ran into that day, she was uninterested in people. She reacted to us when we swam up but soon went back to playing with her toy and ignored us.)
Animals play.