Dolphins- Can Make Their Own Toys Young bottlenose dolphins love to play, and they can even make their own toys for that purpose. They make bubble rings that are sparkling, beautifully formed bubble versions of smoke rings that a human might make. But bubble rings are fashioned with much more skill. First, the dolphins use their fins to whip up the water into currents and they agitate it until it forms a whirlpool. Then, they blow bubbles by shooting air out of their blowholes and into the water. This sends those bubbles into the center of the spinning whirlpool. The result is a round bubble ring around a hole in their center. These bubble rings keep their shape so that a dolphin can play, sometimes swimming through the ring as if it’s a hoop or creating several rings to join together. Sometimes, they just use their noses to move the rings around just like kids enjoy rolling a ball. Dolphins learn to create their best bubble toys through experimentation. For example, to join two bubble rings together each one must be perfect, and dolphins experiment until they judge a bubble ring is perfect enough for them to play the game of joining it to another ring. This experimentation and use of judgment is just another example of bottlenose intelligence, and so is their versatility in making toys and playing with them. According to the admiring dolphin researcher Dr. Ken Marten, dolphins are such experts at using hydrodynamics to create their bubble rings that they could be “professors of fluid mechanics.”
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 19:42:00 +0000
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