dean

That has not been my personal or professional experience, nor that of the researchers of whom I am familiar. Dolphin behavior is pretty much typical of any of the gregarious toothed whales. They are not hairless Golden Retrievers with ESP.
I know of many instances of swimmers being bitten, rammed, or fluked without any apparent provocation when interacting with wild dolphins.

I have heard many anecdotes, but I have yet to see any documented incidences of this by reliable/reputable sources. Even if it is true, there are more reasonable explanations for the behavior other than dolphins simply being the good samaritans of the sea.

S1997

Damn! .. can't resist a comment. In the sixties and seventies there were researchers (part of the time on LSD I think) , that were trying hard to understand dolphin "language". They even tried spending days immersed in a tank of water with "sensory deprivation" to get into the dolphin frame of mind. Given that dolphins supposedly have about eight times the number of neurons in their auditory system than human have (and reportedly eight times fewer neurons in their visual system), these guys were actually using research grant money from the Navy trying to devise interspecies "transforms" from one communication system to the other. Nice try, but they were just romantics, just lookin for a friend.

Too bad they didn't succeed! We may need them when the star wars come!!

dean

That would be John Lilly here in Florida. He did, in fact, spend more than a little of his time on LSD (he was friends with Tim Leary and Richard Alpert, AKA Baba Ram Dass). He was convinced that the bottle-nosed dolphin possessed human attributes and even went so far as to make the claim that dolphins are capable of committing suicide. I believe that he planted the seed for all of this New Age anthropomorphization of dolphins stuff.
It strikes me as funny that the octopus is extremely intelligent, capable of communication, and may well have a non verbal form of language, yet not many people are out there hugging them or being champions for their cause. <Mr. Rogers voice> Can you say, species-centrism? I knew that you could. </Mr. Rogers voice>

leahysailor

I'll bet everyone of us loved Flipper!! Seriously though we were in the middle of the Indian Ocean doing a 7 month crusie, from the bridge of my ship to the horizion we had a viewing range of about 14 miles in diameter. We came up on a school of porpoises that reached the horizon on both sides of the ship. I know that I saw at least 6 different species of porpoises. One of the most amazing things I have ever seen.

S1997

I have seen dolphins at sea and in captivity, too, but have never touched a dolphin, so I know very little about them. But I find all of this stuff kinda interesting. It has always been a puzzle to me, though, given the capacity of French to easily coin names for things and species -- why we should have to use the term porpoise for both a species of fish and a species of mammals. It's confusing to us Vintage folks.

Traveler

I despised that show just for the theme song.

dean

The use of common names is a big PITA for me. Binomial nomenclature is where it's at! Carolus Linnaeus lives!

dean

Not so much, I preferred Sea Hunt.

I'm envious. In all my years, I've never encounted more than a few wild porpoises at a time.

leahysailor

Being at sea especially away from all artificial light is also pretty amazing. While on another western Pacific cruise in 1986 I got to see Halley's comet. My avatar is my old ship Uss Leahy CG16 guided missle crusier. The picture of my boat was taken at anchor in Singapore during the cruise that I saw Halley's comet. Good liberty ins Singapore!!!
Pods of killer whales in the Aleutians was also pretty neat!

S1997

Well, you zoologists need that kind of precision for your work. But for ordinary guys, like me, who talk about dolphins everyday, I'd be happy if the language police would forbid people to call the 'dolphin' fish a dolphin. They should be forced to add something on the end at least, like -esque would work! Forget freedom of speech!!






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