Sea Chefs - Scientists Watch As Dolphins Remove Ink, Bone From Cuttlefish Before Eating - Reuters

[hatrack]

CANBERRA - Dolphins are the chefs of the seas, having been seen going through precise and elaborate preparations to rid cuttlefish of ink and bone to produce a soft meal of calamari, Australian scientists say. A wild female Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin was observed going through the same series of complicated steps to prepare cuttlefish prey for eating in the Spencer Gulf, in South Australia state.

"It's a sign of how well their brains are developed. It's a pretty clever way to get pure calamari without all the horrible bits," Mark Norman, the curator of mollusks at Museum Victoria and a research team member, told the Canberra Times newspaper. The research team, writing in the science journal PLoS One, said they repeatedly observed a female dolphin herding cuttlefish out of algal weed and onto a clear, sandy patch of seafloor.

The dolphin, identified using circular body scars, then pinned the cuttlefish with its snout while standing on its head, before killing it instantly with a rapid downward thrust and "loud click" audible to divers as the hard cuttlebone broke. The dolphin then lifted the body up and beat it with her nose to drain the toxic black ink that cuttlefish squirt into the water to defend themselves when attacked. Next the prey was taken back to the seafloor, where the dolphin scraped it along the sand to strip out the cuttlebone, making the cuttlefish soft for eating.

Norman and study co-author Tom Tregenza, from the University of Exeter, said the behavior exhibited between 2003 and 2007 was unlikely to be a rarity.

EDIT

http://planetark.org/enviro-news/item/51426

[Spinzonner]

1. Can't say I entirely approve of their table manners

or eating on the (sea)bed

[enlightenment]

2. I want to see my local fish monger stand on his head and

do that, darn it.

Smart critters, dolphins. Thank you for the link.

[Peace Patriot]

3. And that's an air-breathing mammal! Amazing feats of dexterity, fore-thought,

endurance and...HOPE! You gotta have A LOT of faith in the future--and faith in your own skills and plans--to produce this kind of persistence, while HOLDING YOUR BREATH. It's comparable to human pearl divers, I think. I also think it's time to create a non-homocentric definition of sentience, and to protect creatures like dolphins from murder (and prosecute those who murder them). Time was when slaves could be murdered with impunity, because they were considered sub-human and "property." It took a while, but it is so obvious that human slaves ARE human, that that crime was eventually banned. But the lack of obviousness--to our prejudiced eyes--of the sentience of dolphins and some other creatures (elephants, for instance, and chimps and apes), should not stop us from considering this matter, and taking the cautionary approach of presuming sentience, when certain characteristics are presence, rather than risk murdering sentient beings. The economic value of dead dolphins or elephants, etc.--to us humans--should be of no importance in this determination, although we know that it was, as to human slaves--to our everlasting shame.

Defining sentience, however, is not so easy as dismissing the clearly self-serving human motive of profit in killing creatures who might be sentient. We tend to use our artifacts--buildings, tractors, airplanes, lunar modules, martian rovers, electrical grids, medicines, highly organized cities and governments, etc.--and our modes of expression--books, songs, movies, oral and written language, history, libraries, preservation and passing along to the future of our knowledge, etc.--to judge ourselves superior to, and significantly different from, all other creatures. Human-created religious doctrines--placed by us into the mind of God--also play a huge role in our bigotry. We are special. We have souls. We are "endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights." We also use that illusive thing called consciousness or self-reflection--in our more sophisticated philosophies--to set ourselves apart. (How to prove it, though?--that is the problem.)

Dolphin cultural accomplishments and communication may occur in ways that are difficult for us to recognize and assess--although our scientific subtlety is improving. I think it has become increasingly likely--based on dolphin studies--that dolphins are using their highly complex language to communicate volumes of information to each other and to their offspring. In other words, their brains are their libraries (much like ours were/are in oral cultures), and their underwater sound systems are their books, movies, histories, TV shows, schools, epic poems, political speeches, lovesongs and virtual cities. Also, their easy life (apart from our aggressions), in the vast oceans, may be why they have never bothered to create skyscapers or tractors. They don't need them. And their highly sophisticated communication system and organized defense strategy is sufficient to deal with the occasional shark that might attack them. Finally, they may have a superior moral code (superior to ours) of peaceful living and non-aggression. They seem to love life and love each other (and even love us, in their way) and may in fact be better Christians, for instance, than many humans who call themselves by that name.

Their love of life has been indelibly stamped upon them, by evolution's hand, in their permanent smiles. Pleasure and fun are never far from their minds, as evidenced by all of their observed behavior. Why not smile forever?

Does all this add up to sentience? If we define sentience as having the self-consciousness to become neurotic, even psychotic, maybe not. But what if evolution also, at the same time, shaped a self-conscious species in which neuroses, psychosis and self-worship are unthinkable? Wouldn't such a species be, not just sentient, but superior? And since the evidence favors the second possibility--that dolphins are our equals, and may even be superior to us as ethical beings--how dare we kill dolphins as if they were fish?

Well, I am not the first human to think this. I just want to add my voice to those crying in the wilderness--like the early abolitionists, against the cultural norm--that we need to think this one through, make an ethical decision about it and act accordingly. As with slavery, we do have the ability to correct ourselves, and sometimes live up to our self-regard.