Thanks for the fish!

January 10, 2018 10:17 AM

Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on.

Dolphins are so much smarter than we think that they know how to game the system to get more and better rewards. -- Original Grauniad article from 2003 by Anuschka de Rohan, but doing the rounds on Twitter thanks to Julia Galef's tweet about it.
posted by MartinWisse (14 comments total)

After mastering this lucrative strategy, she taught her calf, who taught other calves

Humans are so fucked.
posted by not_the_water at 10:20 AM on January 10, 2018 [5 favorites]

One of my favorite papers was an assessment of the visual acuity of the spiny echidna. They would reward the echidna with a tasty treat if it was able to identify a certain shape. The authors concluded that echidnas had poor eyesight but were aware of the test setup, because "wrong answers were accompanied by vigorous throttling of the experimental apparatus".
posted by benzenedream at 10:23 AM on January 10, 2018 [18 favorites]

Reading the article makes me want to leave a message for the Evolved Dolphin People of four million years hence. Something a bit better than "sorry what we did to your planet" or "this is not a place of honour" ideally.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 10:41 AM on January 10, 2018 [8 favorites]

Humans are so fucked.

The Onion called it back in 2000: Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs
posted by fuse theorem at 10:48 AM on January 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

Considering I caught my beagle mix faking a nap to try and sneak cat food when I left the house, none of this surprises me.
posted by The Power Nap at 10:55 AM on January 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

Humans are so fucked.

Seriously. It's kind of disturbing how quickly they took to becoming seagull serial killers. The right training could probably have them luring people into the water by waving $20s. Then they learn to fashion fake bills out of seaweed.
posted by demonic winged headgear at 10:59 AM on January 10, 2018 [7 favorites]

I, for one, welcome etc., etc.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:02 AM on January 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

kind of weird that they don't even mention telepathically communicating with dolphin comrades

typical capitalist propaganda
posted by indubitable at 11:47 AM on January 10, 2018

I think anyone who knows their own name has by that fact made clear they deserve the same compassion, mercy and respect as any sentient self-determining entity.

I’m calling now for a higher dolphin minimum wage, access to contraception and a comprehensive GED programme. I think the FBI need to acknowledge the requirement for a warrant before tracking a dolphin’s phone, and also that dolphins should have phones.

Seriously — we capture, enslave and murder these people? What’s wrong with us?
posted by Construction Concern at 11:59 AM on January 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Please let them go, or if that is dangerous, set them up for life.
posted by sfts2 at 12:09 PM on January 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Or 'So long, thanks for the fish.'
posted by sfts2 at 12:11 PM on January 10, 2018

Humans are so fucked.

Nope, that's why we've been killing them off. We just need to finish the job.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:16 PM on January 10, 2018

Seriously — we capture, enslave and murder these people? What’s wrong with us?

I'm not sure if you're being facetious or not, but considering humans generally have a hard time accepting it's wrong to capture, enslave, and murder OTHER HUMANS, it's not surprising most people couldn't care less about the atrocities we commit against dolphins. For a long time my family has boycotted any place that supports the Cetacean trade, from Seaworld to the Shedd Aquarium, and I encourage everyone else to follow suit. They deserve better than to be cooped up for our amusement.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 12:43 PM on January 10, 2018 [7 favorites]

benzenedream, do you happen to have a PDF you could send me or a citation for that echidna paper? It sounds incredible.

On a similar note, a paper came out in Science earlier this year about bumblebees (!) learning to roll a "soccer ball" to a location to get a reward, then subsequently teaching other bees to do the same thing. (Original text here.)
posted by angst at 2:36 PM on January 10, 2018 [10 favorites]