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Transcript

How Dolphins Work! · Stuff You Should Know

0:12
Speaker 1: And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck.
0:15
Speaker 1: Jerry's here too, And this is stuff you should know
0:19
Speaker 1: where we use a lot of up speak. So there
0:23
Speaker 1: you go.
0:24
Speaker 2: Was that your dolphin?
0:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hadn't practiced for a while, so it was
0:29
Speaker 1: a little rusty.
0:31
Speaker 2: Hey, can I just very quickly mention the correction? Oh sure,
0:36
Speaker 2: I'm free wheeling it here. But we got a lot
0:37
Speaker 2: of emails from people that are in disbelief that we
0:42
Speaker 2: didn't know it's chassis.
0:44
Speaker 1: Oh I knew its Chassie. I used it correctly.
0:47
Speaker 2: Oh. Everyone said that we were saying chassis, and every
0:49
Speaker 2: time I said it, you were like, yeah.
0:51
Speaker 1: I didn't I would. I just didn't correct you.
0:53
Speaker 2: No, Well, I appreciate that sometimes you.
0:57
Speaker 1: Don't like to be corrected, or else you're like, I know,
0:59
Speaker 1: I'm just saying it that way. So I just didn't
1:04
Speaker 1: not so to leave you out there twisting or anything
1:06
Speaker 1: like that.
1:07
Speaker 2: Okay, interesting, if you.
1:09
Speaker 1: Want, maybe we can retake this whole thing and I'll
1:11
Speaker 1: just I'll just take it with you. How about that.
1:13
Speaker 2: No, that's all right. Anyway, I didn't know was pronounced chassis.
1:16
Speaker 2: Now that I hear it, I've heard that word. But
1:19
Speaker 2: I'm not a car guy, so I don't know these things.
1:21
Speaker 1: Well. I feel really terrible. I mean, I feel terrible.
1:25
Speaker 1: I'm very sorry. I'll correct you every single time from
1:27
Speaker 1: now on. Okay, great, Okay, I'll just bring the podcast
1:31
Speaker 1: to a screeching halt and be like, no, that was wrong.
1:35
Speaker 2: Okay, that's really funny.
1:37
Speaker 1: What a twist, man, I'm sorry, Chuck. So we're talking
1:42
Speaker 1: about dolphins. Is that how I was pronounced?
1:46
Speaker 2: I think?
1:46
Speaker 1: So, okay, that's that we should say it. Then. I'm
1:50
Speaker 1: pretty excited about this one, Chuck, because, as everybody knows,
1:53
Speaker 1: dolphins are awesome, and we're going to talk about all
1:56
Speaker 1: the reasons why they're awesome. It's pretty much the gist
2:00
Speaker 1: of this episode.
2:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, dolphins are marine mammals. I
2:06
Speaker 2: guess we should start there, and that entails a whole
2:09
Speaker 2: host of things that we're going to go over, not
2:11
Speaker 2: just some fish, but they technically are cetaceans, and that's
2:17
Speaker 2: a marine mammal, along with eighty other types of species,
2:21
Speaker 2: including whales. And if you think porpoises are the same,
2:25
Speaker 2: it's in that same species.
2:27
Speaker 1: So relax, right, And I just realized, Chuck, I don't
2:31
Speaker 1: have any of my notes here, so I could try
2:33
Speaker 1: to wing it, or you can just wait a second
2:36
Speaker 1: and I can go get my notes, go.
2:38
Speaker 2: Get your notes, and I'll just continue and no, it
2:41
Speaker 2: will be any the wiser, and.
2:42
Speaker 1: Then you can fill me in when I get back.
2:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
2:45
Speaker 1: Okay.
2:47
Speaker 2: There are forty plus species of dolphin and they're in
2:49
Speaker 2: the family of oceanic dolphins or delphinity. And there's also
2:55
Speaker 2: river dolphins. So I know everyone's out there saying, hey,
2:57
Speaker 2: there's river dolphins out there. There aren't many. There's four
3:00
Speaker 2: river not just four, but four kinds of river dolphins,
3:05
Speaker 2: and each one is just one species. So those are
3:08
Speaker 2: the river dolphins.
3:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've always found that so weird. I mean, I
3:11
Speaker 1: know that taxonomically you're supposed to really kind of stick
3:14
Speaker 1: to it, but there's got to be a better way,
3:16
Speaker 1: you know.
3:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. But we're I mean, we're gonna talk
3:19
Speaker 2: a little bit about other kinds, but we're mainly gonna
3:21
Speaker 2: be talking about the bottle nose of which they're about
3:24
Speaker 2: six hundred thousand, because the bottlenose dolphin is the one
3:27
Speaker 2: that everyone is most familiar with and the ones that
3:29
Speaker 2: are on TV and unfortunately.
3:32
Speaker 1: And dolphin aarians, uh yeah, where they keep dolphins as hostages.
3:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, and make them perform tricks for dopes.
3:42
Speaker 1: It's crazy. Yeah. So yeah, bottlenos are the money dolphins.
3:47
Speaker 1: It's everdvice talking about, and that's what we're gonna talk about.
3:51
Speaker 1: And they I think they're one of the more studied
3:54
Speaker 1: ones too, even though the common ones are so many
3:57
Speaker 1: more of them. But we know that dolphins bottlenose dolphins.
4:00
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think basically when we're saying dolphins, unless
4:03
Speaker 1: we specify, we're talking about bottlenose dolphins, how's that for
4:06
Speaker 1: some guardrails?
4:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And also speaking of guardrails, we might
4:10
Speaker 2: as well just go ahead and say, I know there'd
4:12
Speaker 2: be plenty of kids listening because they love our animal episodes.
4:16
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and the dolphin episode gets a little you know,
4:20
Speaker 1: a little blue not blue.
4:22
Speaker 2: Necessarily, it gets a little sexy here in there, but
4:24
Speaker 2: you know that's just the deal with dolphins.
4:28
Speaker 1: Okay. So so yeah, so I think that was a
4:32
Speaker 1: pretty good seahoey man, because it does get a little you.
4:35
Speaker 2: Know, I mean, hey, we're I feel like this is
4:37
Speaker 2: all like scientific stuff, so we should be able to
4:41
Speaker 2: handle it and kids should be able to handle it.
4:43
Speaker 2: But if there are any adults that are like, what
4:45
Speaker 2: are you talking about, then do the little research first.
4:49
Speaker 1: Right. Oh, so, I think I was talking about how
4:53
Speaker 1: bottlenose dolphins are pretty well studied that we know that
4:55
Speaker 1: they live for about forty five to fifty years. Yeah,
4:58
Speaker 1: pretty good, that's in the wild. Yeah, of course, I know.
5:01
Speaker 1: We've talked about plenty of animals over the years where
5:03
Speaker 1: they actually live longer in captivity, usually because they're just
5:07
Speaker 1: food for other larger animals. That's not true with dolphins.
5:10
Speaker 1: Their lifespan is usually much shorter, and that's controversial. We'll
5:15
Speaker 1: talk about that later. But we know that in the
5:17
Speaker 1: wild fifty years that's a pretty aged dolphin if you
5:20
Speaker 1: think about it.
5:21
Speaker 2: No, agreed, that's a nice long life I think for
5:24
Speaker 2: a sea creature.
5:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, well more can they ask for? Stop complaining dolphins?
5:29
Speaker 2: There was one supposedly that was sixty seven years old,
5:33
Speaker 2: presumed dead in twenty seventeen, But my friend, I like
5:37
Speaker 2: to think that that dolphin is seventy five right now.
5:39
Speaker 1: Nice. I think that's a great way to look at things. Yeah,
5:43
Speaker 1: so do you kind of see dolphins closer to shore?
5:48
Speaker 1: Sometimes they are basically just out to see. It depends
5:51
Speaker 1: on the species. I think common dolphins stay fairly close
5:56
Speaker 1: to shore. Bottlenose will get right up on you essentially
6:01
Speaker 1: the place where you mean. I used to live kind
6:04
Speaker 1: of along the coast in our backyard. Dolphins would swim
6:08
Speaker 1: there's like a lagoon. And now that I know a
6:11
Speaker 1: little more about dolphins, I always assumed they were bottle nose,
6:14
Speaker 1: but now that I know a little more, I think
6:16
Speaker 1: that they were probably common dolphins.
6:18
Speaker 2: Well there's a lot more. There's like millions and millions
6:21
Speaker 2: of those, and about six hundred thousand bottle nose. So yeah, statistically,
6:24
Speaker 2: you're probably right precisely.
6:26
Speaker 1: And then the other reason that I think that is
6:28
Speaker 1: because they would basically put on a show chasing fish.
6:31
Speaker 1: They'd jump out of the water and they chase the
6:33
Speaker 1: fish backwards. It was really something to see. And apparently
6:36
Speaker 1: the common dolphins are more acrobatic than bottle nose.
6:39
Speaker 2: Okay, and they might have been playing, as we'll see,
6:41
Speaker 2: you never know, that's possible.
6:42
Speaker 1: They might have been teasing them poor fish.
6:45
Speaker 2: If you are somewhere where you can look up safely
6:48
Speaker 2: on the computer and image, you should look up pa
6:50
Speaker 2: ki Ce t u s the I guess the pacasidas.
6:56
Speaker 1: You nailed it, Chuck.
6:57
Speaker 2: That is the common ancestor that dolphins share. That was
7:00
Speaker 2: around about fifty million years ago. And if you look
7:03
Speaker 2: at it and say, well, wait a minute, Chuck, this
7:04
Speaker 2: thing's walking around on four legs with fur. That's because
7:09
Speaker 2: that's where dolphins came from. It's pretty remarkable when you
7:11
Speaker 2: look at it. It looks like when you see the
7:13
Speaker 2: head of that thing, you can see the dolphin in it,
7:16
Speaker 2: you know.
7:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, So dolphins are more closely related to hippopotami than
7:23
Speaker 1: they are like sea lions or otters or anything like
7:26
Speaker 1: that that are also aquatic or semi aquatic. And it's
7:30
Speaker 1: because this this pacasidas basically moved to the water little
7:35
Speaker 1: by little by little, and it's one of those rare
7:38
Speaker 1: evolutions where we have like a complete fossil record from
7:44
Speaker 1: pecasidas to dolphin. We know all of the iterations that
7:47
Speaker 1: went through over the tens and tens of millions of years.
7:50
Speaker 1: But that's I mean, that's where dolphins came from. They
7:53
Speaker 1: were basically these wolf size creatures.
7:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one of them, I guess spent a little
8:00
Speaker 2: extra time in the water and it was like, you, guys,
8:02
Speaker 2: this is fantastic, Like you should come in here, we
8:05
Speaker 2: should all just stay a little longer. And then before
8:07
Speaker 2: you know it, their legs turned into flippers exactly two
8:11
Speaker 2: or three days.
8:12
Speaker 1: What's cool, too, is there when dolphins are in the
8:16
Speaker 1: embryonic stage, they actually start to develop limbs. Yeah, before
8:20
Speaker 1: the jeans kick in and we'll actually kick off, I guess,
8:24
Speaker 1: and they stop developing and then get absorbed. But they're
8:27
Speaker 1: like in a stage of development they start to grow limbs.
8:31
Speaker 1: So that's I mean, it's a pretty good indication they
8:35
Speaker 1: used to be land mammals.
8:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have vestigial ears, as we'll see too, but
8:39
Speaker 2: I'll just just kind of tease that out, right.
8:42
Speaker 1: And then so the speciation from land mammal to semi
8:45
Speaker 1: aquatic mammal to fully aquatic mammal. The dolphin was complete
8:51
Speaker 1: when somebody mentioned being wet to a dolphin and the
8:54
Speaker 1: dolphin said, what is wet?
8:57
Speaker 2: Really?
8:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was my that was my understanding from the
9:01
Speaker 1: National History Museum.
9:03
Speaker 2: So like we said that, you know, they're gonna share
9:05
Speaker 2: some characteristics with land mammals, but they have a lot
9:08
Speaker 2: of really cool traits and some of these are like
9:11
Speaker 2: you may know, and some of these are just I mean,
9:14
Speaker 2: if you're wondering why people are obsessed with dolphins, it's
9:17
Speaker 2: not just because they go to a dolphin show and
9:20
Speaker 2: think they're awesome, or maybe that's why you might be
9:22
Speaker 2: obsessed with them, listener, But there are so many remarkable,
9:26
Speaker 2: amazing facts about dolphins. They just kind of stack up,
9:30
Speaker 2: like usually when we do anamal episodes or like one
9:32
Speaker 2: or two like Factor the episodes, but this is just
9:34
Speaker 2: riddled with them.
9:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's let's start. And also a big shout
9:39
Speaker 1: out thanks to Kyle for helping us out with this one.
9:41
Speaker 2: Oh Kyle, Okay, thanks mate, or.
9:44
Speaker 1: No, it's probably key Lay, now that I think about it,
9:48
Speaker 1: I feel I feel terrible, Chuck. I'm so sorry, man.
9:52
Speaker 2: So that's okay. So they are placental mammals, so they're
9:55
Speaker 2: gonna they're not gonna lay eggs like you might see
9:58
Speaker 2: a fish stew in the water. They bear live young
10:01
Speaker 2: and it depends on the species, but their pregnancies are
10:04
Speaker 2: going to be between about ten and eighteen months. I
10:06
Speaker 2: don't think I mentioned while you were gone that orcas
10:09
Speaker 2: are part of this group or species family family. Okay,
10:15
Speaker 2: I knew it was.
10:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, them, they're actually dolphins, they're not real whales.
10:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So I think the orcas have the longest
10:22
Speaker 2: gestation period of about eighteen months. But it's very cute
10:26
Speaker 2: because they're going to nurse those calves sometimes up to
10:28
Speaker 2: two years, at a minimum of six months, and those
10:31
Speaker 2: little babies stay with mama for up to five years.
10:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, like toddlers. Isn't that adorable?
10:37
Speaker 2: Yeah.
10:38
Speaker 1: One thing that I hadn't considered is that so dolphins
10:40
Speaker 1: nurse underwater? Wait, do you think.
10:43
Speaker 2: After your child passes toddlerhood they're just sent out to
10:46
Speaker 2: the wild.
10:46
Speaker 1: That was my understanding from the National History Museum. Again, Okay, great,
10:51
Speaker 1: they're really misinforming me.
10:52
Speaker 2: Apparently.
10:54
Speaker 1: So one thing I hadn't thought of as I was saying,
10:56
Speaker 1: is that that dolphin is to nurse underwater, which it
11:00
Speaker 1: could be kind of hard. And then adding to the
11:02
Speaker 1: fact that they don't have lips that they can kind
11:04
Speaker 1: of latch onto a nipple with. It's a puzzler. And
11:09
Speaker 1: it turns out that the way that they nurse is
11:11
Speaker 1: by rolling their tongue into essentially a straw. Yeah, and
11:15
Speaker 1: that's what they latch onto. And apparently we know that
11:19
Speaker 1: it's not the tastiest milk as far as a human
11:22
Speaker 1: palette is concerned, thanks to a scientist named Lillian Eichelberger, who,
11:28
Speaker 1: I guess on a dare drank some dolphin milk and
11:30
Speaker 1: was like, it's fishy, oily, it lacks sweetness, No, Sarah,
11:35
Speaker 1: I don't like it.
11:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if you think that's a weird thing to
11:38
Speaker 2: do while studying dolphins, just strap in, because it's true.
11:43
Speaker 2: Things get much weirder. That was for sure nineteen forty.
11:46
Speaker 2: Things got weird in the seventies, as we'll see, but
11:48
Speaker 2: this got like a milkshake consistency, which is why I
11:51
Speaker 2: guess the straw shaped tongue kind of fits.
11:54
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess.
11:55
Speaker 2: So.
11:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they have to swim. Obviously, they don't have
11:59
Speaker 1: to swim to survive because they breathe air, so it's
12:04
Speaker 1: not like they need air to pass across gills to survive.
12:07
Speaker 2: Right, good point.
12:08
Speaker 1: They do swim quite a bit. They're known for it.
12:10
Speaker 1: Their bodies are actually streamlined to help them swim even more.
12:15
Speaker 1: One thing I also didn't know is that the pectoral fins,
12:17
Speaker 1: the ones that stand up off the back where you're
12:20
Speaker 1: like shark and then your friend says, no, it's dolphin.
12:22
Speaker 1: You go, oh, a dolphin. They have no bone. I
12:26
Speaker 1: believe there's just cartilage and those are they use those
12:29
Speaker 1: to help to steer.
12:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, it's like a little steering unit. They
12:33
Speaker 2: have a layer of blubber. You associate blubber with whales,
12:36
Speaker 2: but the dolphin has blubber too, which is going to
12:39
Speaker 2: provide a little bit of buoyancy if they haven't had
12:42
Speaker 2: food in a while, you know, just like humans do.
12:44
Speaker 2: They can sort of devour their own fat, helps out
12:47
Speaker 2: with body heat. And then besides that steering, they have
12:50
Speaker 2: two horizontal flukes on the tail, so they move vertically.
12:54
Speaker 2: So that's another great way to tell a shark from
12:57
Speaker 2: a dolphin, aside from just opening your eyeballs, because right,
13:00
Speaker 2: I think they look quite different. But the shark, you know,
13:03
Speaker 2: has that vertical tail that sort of goes from side
13:07
Speaker 2: to side. The dolphins is flipped and to me looks
13:11
Speaker 2: like a more efficient system.
13:12
Speaker 1: But that's just a guess you'd think. So the sharks
13:14
Speaker 1: seem to do pretty well for themselves though.
13:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, and real quick inshow correction, I guess the dorsal
13:22
Speaker 2: fin is the one on top, right, Yes, yeah, that's
13:25
Speaker 2: for the stability. The steering comes from those little side flippers,
13:29
Speaker 2: the pectoral fins.
13:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I definitely got that wrong. So to like
13:33
Speaker 1: reimagine it, just imagine a kid running around with their
13:36
Speaker 1: arms sticking out like they're pretending to fly, except dolphins
13:40
Speaker 1: do it for real and in the water. Those are
13:42
Speaker 1: the big differences.
13:43
Speaker 2: That's right, Or like a kid running with their arms
13:45
Speaker 2: to the side, like in the terrifying new movie Weapons.
13:49
Speaker 1: Oh, don't tell me anything about it.
13:51
Speaker 2: That's funny that you always say that, even though I've
13:54
Speaker 2: never told you anything about anything.
13:56
Speaker 1: Well, you just told me that. I just want you
13:58
Speaker 1: to stop right there.
14:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's on the poster, okay, all right.
14:04
Speaker 1: So yeah, I can't wait to see that movie. I'm
14:06
Speaker 1: very exciting. And you said to see it in the theater, right, I.
14:09
Speaker 2: Mean, I recommend it. I was at a sold out
14:11
Speaker 2: ten thirty a m. So people are pretty hyped about it.
14:15
Speaker 2: But it was also kind of neat that there were
14:17
Speaker 2: at least twenty local Atlanta crew as it turned out,
14:20
Speaker 2: because when the credits started rolling, they were all hanging
14:22
Speaker 2: out and like clapping for each other.
14:24
Speaker 1: Oh neat that's very supportive. Did you know any of them?
14:28
Speaker 2: I did, but I didn't know until afterward when Emily
14:31
Speaker 2: said that my friend Stephanie worked on it, and I
14:33
Speaker 2: was like, oh, she might have been one of those people.
14:35
Speaker 1: That's very cool. So yeah, I want to see that movie.
14:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, Act to Dolphins.
14:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, dolphins are also known for as far as
14:45
Speaker 1: they swim, they kind of jump in and out of
14:47
Speaker 1: the water and can go quite fast doing that. It's
14:50
Speaker 1: called porpoising, much to dolphins chagrin. And it turns out
14:55
Speaker 1: it's not just porpoises and dolphins that swim like that.
14:57
Speaker 1: Penguins do too, And I was like, no way. This
15:00
Speaker 1: came from the National History Museum, so I had to
15:02
Speaker 1: go double check, and by god, I saw a video
15:05
Speaker 1: of penguins swimming super fast, faster than dolphins, and they
15:09
Speaker 1: were porpoising in and out of the water. It was
15:12
Speaker 1: really something to see. Have you not seen that before?
15:17
Speaker 1: Not that I know of. I mean, I forget stuff,
15:19
Speaker 1: so it's possible, but it seemed pretty shocking to me
15:22
Speaker 1: when I saw it.
15:24
Speaker 2: Dolphins are also pretty good smellers. They have a blowhole
15:28
Speaker 2: it's basically like nostrils in it's above the frontal skull bones,
15:32
Speaker 2: and it's kind of cool because it connects right to
15:34
Speaker 2: their lungs. They're not mouth breathers, even though apparently they
15:38
Speaker 2: did find a mouth breathing Hector's dolphin, which are dolphins
15:42
Speaker 2: near New Zealand in twenty fifteen. Yeah, so I don't
15:46
Speaker 2: know what that says about that guy, but he was
15:48
Speaker 2: a mouth breather. But that blowhole, like I said, is
15:51
Speaker 2: connected directly to the lungs, and they can open it
15:54
Speaker 2: and close it with a nasal plug and they can
15:57
Speaker 2: fill that thing up very very fast. Like in afraction
15:59
Speaker 2: was second, they can fill up their lungs through the blowhole.
16:03
Speaker 2: They only breathe five or six times a minute, and
16:06
Speaker 2: they can't stand or water all day. But they can
16:08
Speaker 2: stay down there for a few minutes at a time.
16:09
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. But if they say down there too
16:11
Speaker 1: long and they run out of air, they can't drown.
16:13
Speaker 1: They are air breathing mammals. Yeah, don't forget that.
16:17
Speaker 2: The saddest thing I could imagine.
16:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, which we'll get to that later. Yeah, the blowhole
16:24
Speaker 1: also does a really good job of expelling air, because
16:27
Speaker 1: again this is like it's like our mouth breathing in
16:30
Speaker 1: and out except on the top of our head. So
16:33
Speaker 1: when they breathe out, especially having been underwater for a
16:36
Speaker 1: little while, they're breathing out warm air into usually colder
16:42
Speaker 1: air because the sea temperature is usually warmer than the
16:45
Speaker 1: surface temperature in a lot of cases, and it'll condense
16:49
Speaker 1: and that's what their their spout is. It's like you
16:52
Speaker 1: can see it.
16:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty cool. And apparently you can tell like
16:56
Speaker 2: different species apart by the like kind of spout they have.
16:59
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, from what I understand, I couldn't, but I
17:02
Speaker 1: think scientists can.
17:05
Speaker 2: Why don't you take the una hemispheric sleep because that's
17:07
Speaker 2: pretty remarkable and you haven't had a wowie.
17:10
Speaker 1: Oh thanks. Also, I have a correction that I want
17:13
Speaker 1: to put in too. Okay, okay, So we're talking about
17:19
Speaker 1: what dolphins do is uni hemispheric sleep, which is because
17:23
Speaker 1: they are in danger of predation because they don't stop
17:27
Speaker 1: and like you know, follow the bottom of the ocean.
17:31
Speaker 1: They actually have to keep going while they're sleeping. So
17:35
Speaker 1: what they do is shut down half of their brain
17:38
Speaker 1: and the other half just kind of keeps an eye
17:40
Speaker 1: on things. And then when the one brain, one side
17:43
Speaker 1: of the brain has had enough sleep. It's which is
17:46
Speaker 1: over to the other hemisphere, and then that one takes
17:48
Speaker 1: its turn to sleep and the other one takes over
17:50
Speaker 1: to kind of stand guard.
17:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sleeping with one eye open is kind of
17:54
Speaker 2: an old like Western trope. But that's like so funny
17:58
Speaker 2: that dolphins literally do that.
17:59
Speaker 1: Yeah. Sure, and that actually ties in, chuck you ne
18:02
Speaker 1: hemispheric sleep to our Zizzeyan's episode because they were trying
18:06
Speaker 1: to figure out how to do that themselves, which seems
18:08
Speaker 1: to be impossible for humans from what I can tell.
18:11
Speaker 1: And by the way, stay tuned for listener mail because
18:14
Speaker 1: I have a correction related to the Zizians episode. So
18:18
Speaker 1: this is like a correction loused episode.
18:22
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, should we take a break?
18:24
Speaker 1: Yes, I think so.
18:25
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll come back with correction fest right after this.
18:47
Speaker 2: All right, we're back with more on dolphins. No more corrections,
18:51
Speaker 2: I promise they have. And this is to me another
18:55
Speaker 2: like fact of the show. They have incredible eyesight. They
18:58
Speaker 2: see really really well within about a hundre and fifty
19:00
Speaker 2: feet and they do this because they have two kind
19:04
Speaker 2: of slightly flattened eyeballs on the sides of their head.
19:07
Speaker 2: When you look at a dolphin. They're kind of on
19:08
Speaker 2: the sides and they see from both simultaneously, and then
19:12
Speaker 2: like us with binocular vision, they stitch it together to
19:14
Speaker 2: see one thing. But what that results in is a
19:17
Speaker 2: three hundred degree panoramic view nice where they can see
19:21
Speaker 2: basically anywhere they want except right above them.
19:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's their one blind spot is above them. And
19:27
Speaker 1: apparently if they're trying to get a really good look
19:30
Speaker 1: at you, they'll tilt their head down and try to
19:33
Speaker 1: look at you like that. It's pretty cute. Yeah, So
19:37
Speaker 1: they actually do have really good eyesight underwater and above water.
19:41
Speaker 1: And the way that they can transition from a fairly
19:44
Speaker 1: dark environment to a bright, sunny environment because they have
19:51
Speaker 1: a double slit in their pupils. So when their pupils
19:54
Speaker 1: are wide open and say they're kind of dive, they've
19:57
Speaker 1: dived deep and there's not a lot of light trying
20:00
Speaker 1: to capture all of it. It looks like they have
20:02
Speaker 1: two tiny pupils. But then as they come up to
20:05
Speaker 1: the surface and they get closer to the sun, one
20:08
Speaker 1: of their pupils or one of the slits closes in
20:11
Speaker 1: it narrows, so they don't take in quite as much light.
20:13
Speaker 1: So they can see pretty well and they're apparently up
20:16
Speaker 1: to one hundred and fifty feet. They have just really
20:19
Speaker 1: great eyesight from what we can tell.
20:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they you know, it's important that they can
20:23
Speaker 2: do that out of the water because when they porpoise
20:26
Speaker 2: and jump out, they want to see everyone going, oh
20:28
Speaker 2: my god, Larry. Look.
20:32
Speaker 1: Then they give them a little wink nice yeah, and
20:35
Speaker 1: it makes a ding sound.
20:37
Speaker 2: They have teeth, and they're not like, you know, big
20:41
Speaker 2: scary shark teeth. They're kind of cone shaped. They eat fish,
20:45
Speaker 2: of course, crustaceans, squid, and they use their beak. It's
20:49
Speaker 2: also called a rostrum, but we just call it a beak,
20:51
Speaker 2: and you know, they'll grip that prey and they swallow
20:54
Speaker 2: it hole. And they're smart enough to know and we'll
20:57
Speaker 2: get to how smart they are later, but they're smart
20:59
Speaker 2: enough to know that they got swallow this fish headfirst,
21:01
Speaker 2: so they don't catch those spines on their throats. And
21:04
Speaker 2: if they come up against like a catfish or something
21:06
Speaker 2: that's got like really you know, spiky spiny things coming
21:09
Speaker 2: off their head, they'll bite those heads off and eat
21:12
Speaker 2: the rest of it.
21:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll bet that's the sight to see yeah, so
21:17
Speaker 1: they also have really good hearing, which makes sense because
21:21
Speaker 1: they use echolocation, which we'll talk about. But they have
21:25
Speaker 1: ear canals just like us, but they're totally useless. They're vestigial.
21:30
Speaker 1: They don't connect to anything, and in fact, they're plugged
21:32
Speaker 1: up with some pretty serious ear whacks that everybody just
21:36
Speaker 1: kind of considered a curiosity of whales and dolphins that
21:39
Speaker 1: they have big ear plugs of ear wax in their
21:42
Speaker 1: ear canals that don't connect anything, and scientists realize like, oh, actually,
21:46
Speaker 1: they put down layer after layer throughout their life. And
21:50
Speaker 1: you can examine an ear plug or a plug of
21:53
Speaker 1: ear wax of a dolphin or a whale and pretty
21:57
Speaker 1: closely estimate how old it is, like you'reing tree rings.
22:01
Speaker 2: So cool.
22:02
Speaker 1: I think so too.
22:03
Speaker 2: I love that. And they can also, you know, get
22:05
Speaker 2: into that ear wax and analyze it and see what
22:09
Speaker 2: kind of like pollutants it was exposed to and stuff
22:11
Speaker 2: like that, maybe hormone fluctuations. So yeah, that's pretty awesome.
22:15
Speaker 2: And that's like fairly recent, right.
22:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know exactly when, but it is a
22:20
Speaker 1: fairly recent finding for sure. So yeah, look for more
22:25
Speaker 1: talk about dolphin earwax in the future.
22:30
Speaker 2: They don't listen exactly like we do, but they receive
22:33
Speaker 2: high frequency sounds through And this is a pretty good
22:35
Speaker 2: band named Acoustic Fats and their lower jaw and that's
22:39
Speaker 2: going to vibrate through their skull and they have these
22:42
Speaker 2: you know, I guess they're unattached internal earbones that pick
22:47
Speaker 2: up this sound from the acoustic fats.
22:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they can hear sounds. But it's also really
22:53
Speaker 1: useful for echolocation too, where they send a click out
22:58
Speaker 1: and then wait for it to bounce off something and
23:00
Speaker 1: come back. It's received through that jawbone.
23:02
Speaker 2: Yeah.
23:03
Speaker 1: And apparently because the teeth are so close to the
23:06
Speaker 1: nerves that transmit this this impulse, they think that the
23:12
Speaker 1: teeth might actually act as amplifiers. And I wonder if
23:15
Speaker 1: that has to do with the cone shape too.
23:17
Speaker 2: Oh maybe so maybe. Yeah, I mean a cone is
23:21
Speaker 2: a very common way to amplify sound.
23:23
Speaker 1: It is like an old timey cheerleader.
23:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Yeah, I mean that's just another amazing fact.
23:30
Speaker 2: They you know, navies use sonar, so it's and we'll
23:34
Speaker 2: get into this little bit more. But you know, everyone
23:37
Speaker 2: has sort of heard the stories about the damage that's
23:40
Speaker 2: done by you know, ships and navies and exploding things underwater.
23:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the largest dolphins strandings took place because
23:48
Speaker 1: of sonar. There's a big multi national naval exercise in
23:53
Speaker 1: the Arabian Sea in two thousand and nine. I remember that, Yeah,
23:56
Speaker 1: and two hundred dolphins just stranded themselves just trying to
24:00
Speaker 1: get away from the horrible sounds. So, yeah, we've talked
24:04
Speaker 1: about this before. It's a real issue. That's just nothing's
24:07
Speaker 1: being done about it.
24:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh, yeah, there's a lot of sadness in
24:12
Speaker 2: this episode for sure. They do vocalize, you know, you
24:15
Speaker 2: just rewind and listen to Josh at the beginning if
24:18
Speaker 2: you want to hear exactly what it sounds like. Don't
24:20
Speaker 2: bother going to YouTube or anything. They vocalize with whistles
24:24
Speaker 2: and pops and brays. They make these sounds with something
24:28
Speaker 2: called phonic lips, and those are near the blowhole.
24:31
Speaker 1: That's a good one too.
24:33
Speaker 2: Did you say band name?
24:34
Speaker 1: It's a good one.
24:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sonic Youth and Flaming Lips got together
24:38
Speaker 2: for a Superman nice. I just saw the Flaming Lips
24:42
Speaker 2: and they were great. Hadn't seen them in years. Oh yeah, yeah,
24:44
Speaker 2: it's really really good.
24:45
Speaker 1: I've never seen them. I'm sure their shows are pretty great.
24:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty fun. But they have a larynx at
24:50
Speaker 2: the base of the blowhole, and that larynx is going
24:52
Speaker 2: to be able to sort of move and modulate sound
24:55
Speaker 2: by letting air kind of go through at different rates
24:58
Speaker 2: of speed.
24:58
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then they also have something called a melon,
25:01
Speaker 1: which is a big, massive fat in their forehead, which
25:05
Speaker 1: pretty Yeah, it's pretty characteristic of dolphin's look, but that
25:09
Speaker 1: melon is actually able to focus sound like a lens.
25:14
Speaker 1: The little fatty lump moves around. They can move it,
25:18
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. Like those people who can move
25:20
Speaker 1: their forehead up and down, right, I think that's essentially
25:23
Speaker 1: what they're doing, and it focuses the sound, including their echolocation.
25:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, and get this, here's another fact of the episode.
25:33
Speaker 2: I'll take this one, you can take the next one.
25:35
Speaker 2: They can use this to basically name each other. They
25:40
Speaker 2: can broadcast their identity and their location to other dolphins
25:44
Speaker 2: because they have signature whistles, so they come up with
25:46
Speaker 2: their own whistle. They make that sound and everyone knows
25:50
Speaker 2: that's Josh over there, Josh the dolphin.
25:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, my name sounds like in dolphin and.
25:59
Speaker 2: Talk about what mommies do too. That's another wowie.
26:01
Speaker 1: Well, they found that they use baby talk, They use
26:04
Speaker 1: higher frequency whistles and essentially use baby talk with their
26:08
Speaker 1: own calves, which is adorable.
26:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, are we at echolocation? Finally?
26:13
Speaker 1: I think? So this is a pretty cool This is
26:17
Speaker 1: the last fact. The rest of the stuff we're going
26:19
Speaker 1: to talk about is so dry you might as well
26:20
Speaker 1: to stop the episode.
26:21
Speaker 2: No, not true, but you take this because it's a wowe.
26:23
Speaker 2: It's essentially just like bats, right it is.
26:26
Speaker 1: And they figured out that bats and dolphins are essentially
26:29
Speaker 1: not at all related, so they developed pretty much identical
26:34
Speaker 1: forms of echolocation independently. Yeah, it's an example of convergent evolution.
26:41
Speaker 1: But what they do is they produce these clicks. They
26:43
Speaker 1: use the melon to focus those things like a laser,
26:46
Speaker 1: and they can not only so they're bouncing a sound
26:49
Speaker 1: wave off of something. It's coming back and then it
26:53
Speaker 1: is translated into a mental map. So essentially they're seeing,
26:57
Speaker 1: they're experiencing a form of vision like we think of it,
27:01
Speaker 1: but they're doing it through through sonar, essentially their own
27:04
Speaker 1: form of sonar. Yeah, and they it's like really really accurate.
27:10
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah. I mean they've done some studies and they
27:13
Speaker 2: found that they were able to distinguish different disc sizes
27:18
Speaker 2: by as little as one tenth of a centimeter or
27:21
Speaker 2: four hundreds of an inch.
27:22
Speaker 1: Right, which is very small. And I thought that was weird.
27:26
Speaker 1: One tenth of a centimeter. I was like, that sounds familiar,
27:28
Speaker 1: and then I realized it's a millimeter. I don't know
27:30
Speaker 1: why anyone would put it like that. That's why you
27:33
Speaker 1: have the metric system.
27:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you should ask Kyle.
27:37
Speaker 1: Isn't that bizarre?
27:38
Speaker 2: Yeah?
27:39
Speaker 1: Huh So, their their echolocation is quite quite amazing. And
27:45
Speaker 1: I've seen also that they can they can see internal
27:50
Speaker 1: organs in other animals. That's how penetrative. I guess their
27:55
Speaker 1: their echolocation isn't just how nuanced it is.
27:59
Speaker 2: I know Predator is heat based, but I just that's
28:02
Speaker 2: what I think of.
28:03
Speaker 1: That's funny you say that I watched that two days
28:05
Speaker 1: ago the og Yeah, and I this is definitely tied
28:11
Speaker 1: with I guess Commando for Schwarzenegger's best movie.
28:16
Speaker 2: I saw Predator, the original one, but I didn't like
28:20
Speaker 2: follow up with the whole Predator universe.
28:23
Speaker 1: No, I didn't either. I just watched the first one again.
28:25
Speaker 1: I was like, man, this is good.
28:27
Speaker 2: I think those new ones are supposed to be good.
28:29
Speaker 2: To pray and then that other one coming up.
28:31
Speaker 1: Oh, really, they're supposed to be good.
28:32
Speaker 2: That's what I heard.
28:33
Speaker 1: Isn't there like a Predator versus Jason? Didn't it gets
28:37
Speaker 1: it like off the as off the rails as they.
28:39
Speaker 2: Do Predator versus Alien. I think, Yeah, I didn't see
28:43
Speaker 2: that either, and I love the Alien universe.
28:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guarantee Danny McBride's in that.
28:47
Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh so. Dolphins are very social and that's one
28:54
Speaker 2: of the reasons also that people love them, because you
28:56
Speaker 2: often see them swimming in large pods and seeming like
28:59
Speaker 2: they're having a good time together. It's because they basically
29:02
Speaker 2: are pods can be as small as two or up
29:05
Speaker 2: to a thousand, but generally they're between forty and sixty,
29:08
Speaker 2: and they can form very long time social relationships.
29:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's different kinds of pods. There's like, you know,
29:15
Speaker 1: the pod pod, the original one. There's a bunch of
29:18
Speaker 1: different dolphins that some have familial ties, some don't. There's
29:22
Speaker 1: juvenile pods where they the kids reach I guess the
29:27
Speaker 1: end of toddler stage and they're like, go on, go
29:29
Speaker 1: form your own pod. So a bunch of them about
29:32
Speaker 1: the same ageable form of pod together. There's bachelor pods,
29:35
Speaker 1: which is usually two sometimes three males that essentially just
29:39
Speaker 1: form their own jam and crews around together, sometimes forming
29:42
Speaker 1: lifelong friendships. And all of them have their advantages, like
29:47
Speaker 1: it's easier to hunt that, it's easier to defend against
29:50
Speaker 1: something trying to kill you. Yeah, it's easier to pass
29:52
Speaker 1: down knowledge from one generation to another, which we'll talk
29:55
Speaker 1: about in a second. So there's all sorts of advantages.
29:58
Speaker 1: But because of their social nature, they do have a
30:02
Speaker 1: lot of traits that you're like, wow, that's really human.
30:05
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, for sure, this is I told Emily about
30:10
Speaker 2: this one and she was like, well, that's bs, but
30:13
Speaker 2: this is this is sometimes what happens. It's it's fairly rare,
30:16
Speaker 2: but sometimes males will team up and steal a female
30:20
Speaker 2: dolphin from another pod and basically, you know, keep her
30:24
Speaker 2: captive and prevent her from returning.
30:26
Speaker 1: Uh.
30:27
Speaker 2: And it looks like what they think is going on
30:29
Speaker 2: is like they have a situation where they need a
30:31
Speaker 2: female because their long gestation period is and lactation keeps
30:37
Speaker 2: them from being available to breed for sometimes years at
30:40
Speaker 2: a time, so they're like, we got a breed, We're
30:43
Speaker 2: gonna go take her and keep her here.
30:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's this high competition for females. So it's not
30:48
Speaker 1: the most tasteful dolphin fact around. So we'll follow that
30:52
Speaker 1: one up with a more heartwarming one where they also
30:57
Speaker 1: have been observed in plenty of instances to engage in
31:01
Speaker 1: altruistic behavior, like social behavior where they don't leave behind
31:05
Speaker 1: like sicker injured friends.
31:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, go ahead tell them about that one.
31:11
Speaker 1: I think this was in the mid two thousand aughts,
31:16
Speaker 1: I think whatever, there was a group of eleven dolphins
31:18
Speaker 1: that essentially swam together to form a raft with their
31:23
Speaker 1: injured companion in the middle to keep them from sinking
31:29
Speaker 1: and dying. Yeah, and I mean that's pretty amazing altruistic behavior.
31:35
Speaker 1: I think they've also seen other ones do that too.
31:38
Speaker 1: It's not like this is a one time thing, so
31:40
Speaker 1: that's a pretty I mean there's a lot of animals
31:44
Speaker 1: that are out there like, oh you're sick, good luck dying,
31:46
Speaker 1: We're moving on, or I'll eat you exactly. Yeah, dolphins
31:50
Speaker 1: don't do that. They try to take care of their peeps.
31:53
Speaker 2: Amazing. All right, I say, we take our second break,
31:56
Speaker 2: Oh okay, and we come back with more on the
31:58
Speaker 2: amazing dolphin right after this.
32:19
Speaker 1: So, Chuck, one of the great things about dolphins is
32:21
Speaker 1: that we know that they play. It's not anthropomorphizing, it's
32:26
Speaker 1: they're playing. Juveniles play with one another. They sometimes play
32:29
Speaker 1: with their parents. They'll swim around and the head of
32:33
Speaker 1: another dolphin and just kind of tease them. We talked
32:36
Speaker 1: about them teasing fish earlier. What is that all about?
32:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean sometimes they've been observed doing that. Like
32:43
Speaker 2: they'll go up and not eat a fish, but they'll
32:45
Speaker 2: like get the fish's tail in its mouth and being
32:48
Speaker 2: like like kind of like I got your nose, and
32:50
Speaker 2: then they'll swim away and the fishes like what just happened?
32:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then I'm swimming porpoising in the waves of
32:56
Speaker 1: ships that are traveling fairly fast. They think, essentially, that's
33:00
Speaker 1: for thrills and kicks. Yeah, that's so cool.
33:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty cool.
33:04
Speaker 1: There are also gay dolphin behaviors as well, where those
33:09
Speaker 1: male friends for life and the bachelor pods they'll have sex.
33:15
Speaker 2: I mean, isn't that the whole point? In the Bachelor Pod.
33:17
Speaker 1: I think so, you know, yeah, that and playing video
33:20
Speaker 1: games together afterwards.
33:22
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. Yeah, I mean they this is where, you know,
33:25
Speaker 2: gets a little sexy. But they basically on a daily basis,
33:29
Speaker 2: they've observed dolphins exhibiting what's called non conceptive sexual behavior,
33:35
Speaker 2: so they're not trying to reproduce. They're getting together and
33:39
Speaker 2: having a good time for the fun of it.
33:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that and CSB for the church goers. That
33:46
Speaker 1: also includes masturbation. Apparently captive dolphins do that every day,
33:51
Speaker 1: which makes sense because they've got nothing else to do,
33:53
Speaker 1: so they're just kind of bored. But they will use walls.
33:58
Speaker 1: Other dolphins they'll use trainer sometimes for stimulation. Yeah, and
34:04
Speaker 1: that actually happens.
34:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw too. They might lean up against a
34:08
Speaker 2: washing machine from time to time.
34:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty good. Is that real? Is that just a troper?
34:15
Speaker 1: Is that real?
34:16
Speaker 2: I'm sure it's happened. All right, let's talk about let's
34:22
Speaker 2: clean this thing up. Well, actually we can't clean it
34:24
Speaker 2: up because we're about to talk about something else like that.
34:26
Speaker 2: We're talking about dolphins intelligence and we know they're smart
34:32
Speaker 2: and a lot of that comes from a guy named
34:34
Speaker 2: doctor John C. Lilly in the nineteen sixties who really
34:38
Speaker 2: put dolphins on the map in a bigger way by
34:40
Speaker 2: saying that they're probably as intelligent as we are. He
34:44
Speaker 2: did some pretty awful experience experiments, like injecting them with LSD.
34:49
Speaker 2: He mapped unsedated dolphins cerebral cortex with probes, and he
34:56
Speaker 2: was involved in a very infamous experiment in nineteen sixty three.
35:00
Speaker 2: I said it was the seventies. It was the sixties
35:03
Speaker 2: when he got a woman named Margaret Howell love It
35:07
Speaker 2: and paired her with a dolphin named Peter and a
35:11
Speaker 2: flooded apartment so they could live together and learn more
35:16
Speaker 2: about each other.
35:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Lily was obsessed with the idea that dolphins
35:21
Speaker 1: could learn English, not just to understand it, but to
35:24
Speaker 1: speak it, because sometimes apparently they'll mimic's people speaking a
35:30
Speaker 1: little bit with one of their squeaks. So He's like,
35:33
Speaker 1: they clearly want to communicate. That's why he injected him
35:36
Speaker 1: with LST. That's why he had Peter live with Margaret,
35:40
Speaker 1: and she was supposed to teach him how to say
35:42
Speaker 1: Hello Margaret, but apparently though the lessons would get interrupted
35:46
Speaker 1: because Peter was rather randy dolphin. He was captive after all.
35:52
Speaker 1: So Margaret Howell love It became known as the woman
35:57
Speaker 1: who would manually satisfy really relief, and she was like, yes,
36:05
Speaker 1: I realized this is a very odd behavior. And apparently
36:09
Speaker 1: Hustler picked us up and wrote all about it, this crazy,
36:13
Speaker 1: this crazy thing that was going on, and she was like, look,
36:17
Speaker 1: I'm trying to actually interact with the dolphin, teach the
36:20
Speaker 1: dolphin this, and Peter just can't focus on anything else.
36:24
Speaker 1: So it's like an itch, you scratch it and then
36:25
Speaker 1: you move on, And of course it's what everybody talked about.
36:29
Speaker 1: But eventually the funding dried up and Peter was essentially
36:35
Speaker 1: just kicked out of the apartment is separated from Margaret,
36:38
Speaker 1: who he'd essentially adopted as either a pod member or
36:44
Speaker 1: his girlfriend or something. He had a very strong attachment
36:47
Speaker 1: to her, and they just ripped him away from her,
36:49
Speaker 1: and it did not go very well.
36:51
Speaker 2: No, he did not say so long and thanks for
36:53
Speaker 2: all the fish. He very sadly appeared to have taken
36:57
Speaker 2: his own life. He just kind of sunk himself to
37:00
Speaker 2: the bottom and didn't breathe anymore.
37:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, how sad is that?
37:04
Speaker 2: Oh, dude, I mean, you put this dolphin in an
37:07
Speaker 2: apartment with this woman, and then that happens, and then
37:10
Speaker 2: he seemingly kills himself.
37:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, kids, Yeah, I mean, if you ever see a
37:16
Speaker 1: dolphin in captivity, it's it's a really horrible thing to see,
37:21
Speaker 1: especially if it's like just indoors. It's just it's worse
37:27
Speaker 1: than other animals I think, and I don't think any
37:29
Speaker 1: animals should be kept in captivity, but dolphins seem to be.
37:32
Speaker 1: It's just worse, you know.
37:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean to me, when you're talking about an
37:37
Speaker 2: ocean dwelling species, it's a big area, right, Yeah, but
37:43
Speaker 2: they are smart sort of a long way of getting
37:45
Speaker 2: around and saying we know they're super smart. We've seen
37:47
Speaker 2: their vocalizations and their social relationships and how they can
37:51
Speaker 2: learn and mimic things. But you know, saying like they're
37:55
Speaker 2: as smart as humans, it's just a weird. People should
37:59
Speaker 2: stop comparing animals to humans like that.
38:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point, Chuck. I mean, they're their
38:03
Speaker 1: own thing. Let's understand them on their own.
38:05
Speaker 2: Terms, exactly meet him where they're at. As they say,
38:08
Speaker 2: we do know.
38:08
Speaker 1: They use tools. There is just there's some dolphins that
38:12
Speaker 1: have been shown to basically attach a sponge to their rostrum,
38:16
Speaker 1: their beak, or their schnas when they're hunting for food
38:20
Speaker 1: or forging for food on the seafloor, to basically cushion.
38:24
Speaker 1: It isn't that neat?
38:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing, like a little bumper.
38:27
Speaker 1: Yeah. But even more amazing than that is that not
38:31
Speaker 1: all dolphins do that, some groups do that, and that
38:34
Speaker 1: they learn it from the other members of their pod,
38:38
Speaker 1: which is a cut and dried version of culture that
38:41
Speaker 1: fits essentially all of the boxes for culture and culture
38:45
Speaker 1: is very rare in the animal kingdom, and dolphins seem
38:48
Speaker 1: to display it, at least through the sponge tool use.
38:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So this is sort of the saddest
38:54
Speaker 2: part of the episode is when we talk about captive
38:56
Speaker 2: dolphins and kind of what'smans have kind of screwed it
39:01
Speaker 2: all up as usual. But there has been dolphin entertainment
39:05
Speaker 2: for a long time since in nineteenth century, but things
39:08
Speaker 2: really grew after the TV show Flipper in the nineteen sixties.
39:12
Speaker 2: There were three dolphin areums before that, and by two
39:15
Speaker 2: thousand and nine there were one hundred all over the world.
39:17
Speaker 2: And while trade is illegal in the US, Mexico, and Europe,
39:20
Speaker 2: they are captured at different places in the world, and
39:24
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about some specifically, like Japan and Taiwan.
39:28
Speaker 2: But the rate of mortality is disputed. If you want
39:32
Speaker 2: to look at SeaWorld's research, they're going to say it's
39:34
Speaker 2: really not that different. If you're going to look at
39:36
Speaker 2: research by people who used to work at SeaWorld and
39:39
Speaker 2: don't anymore, they'll say, no, male orc has lived fifteen
39:44
Speaker 2: years less in captivity, and females as much as thirty.
39:46
Speaker 2: So just I think that speaks for itself.
39:49
Speaker 1: And there was also a nineteen eighty eight study Chuck
39:51
Speaker 1: in the journal Marine Mammal Science, and it found that
39:55
Speaker 1: about half of captive dolphins die within ninety days of
39:58
Speaker 1: being captured. So this is not They're just not a
40:02
Speaker 1: species or a family or a type of animal that
40:05
Speaker 1: should be held in captivity, and yet they are. SeaWorld
40:09
Speaker 1: very famously in twenty sixteen said that they were no
40:12
Speaker 1: longer going to breed orcas, but that they weren't about
40:16
Speaker 1: to retire the orcas that they still had left. Yeah,
40:20
Speaker 1: that was largely thanks to the documentary Blackfish, which you've
40:23
Speaker 1: never seen that, go watch it right now.
40:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, good one.
40:26
Speaker 1: But they still have captive breeding programs for their dolphins,
40:30
Speaker 1: and those don't seem to be going anywhere either.
40:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, some people, you know, make an argument that, you know,
40:37
Speaker 2: studying these things in captivity is like how we how
40:39
Speaker 2: we learn about them, which is obviously true to a
40:41
Speaker 2: certain degree. But dolphin experts will say, hey, you're not
40:46
Speaker 2: learning about their real habitat if you're studying a dolphin
40:49
Speaker 2: in captivity, because they're in captivity, Like their behaviors change, like,
40:53
Speaker 2: you know, all kinds of things are different because they're
40:55
Speaker 2: swimming around in a pool rather than the ocean.
40:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, imagine putting a hue into solitary confinement long
41:02
Speaker 1: enough for them to become totally insane and studying their
41:07
Speaker 1: behavior and extrapolating it onto the rest of humanity. That's
41:11
Speaker 1: essentially what the critics are saying that people who study
41:14
Speaker 1: animals in captivity are doing. It's tough to disagree with
41:17
Speaker 1: that as far as I'm concerned.
41:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're also used by the US Navy. They're the
41:22
Speaker 2: second largest holder of marine mammals in the United States
41:25
Speaker 2: behind SeaWorld. Yeah. They started this program, the Marine Mammal
41:28
Speaker 2: Program for the Navy in nineteen fifty nine, and by
41:32
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighties they had over one hundred dolphins. I
41:35
Speaker 2: think that numbers ticked down to like the mid seventies
41:38
Speaker 2: ish now. But you know, if you've heard stories of
41:42
Speaker 2: like dolphins used in war with like lasers on their head,
41:45
Speaker 2: they don't have lasers on their head. But there have
41:47
Speaker 2: been some verified reports that dolphins have like blowguns on
41:52
Speaker 2: their head.
41:53
Speaker 1: Oh was that verified? I know that there's certainly rumors, well.
41:57
Speaker 2: Not verified as in like the US Navy verified it,
42:00
Speaker 2: but I think there have been people that are like, no,
42:02
Speaker 2: this is happening, and they've observed it in the Soviet
42:06
Speaker 2: space as well well.
42:07
Speaker 1: For the most part, what they're used is to either
42:09
Speaker 1: identify mines like find and identify minds because their echo
42:13
Speaker 1: location can detect the void inside the casing of a
42:17
Speaker 1: mine that's buried under mud, and they'll go to tag
42:21
Speaker 1: it essentially. Or they'll look for swimmers or divers who
42:25
Speaker 1: are trying to sabotage like a ship or something, and
42:29
Speaker 1: they'll go up and basically bump them and put a
42:32
Speaker 1: tracker on that diver and then let the Navy people
42:37
Speaker 1: take over and track that person. So the Navy's like,
42:41
Speaker 1: no dolphin has ever killed a person in combat. It
42:46
Speaker 1: just has never happened. But there is one recorded instance
42:50
Speaker 1: of a dolphin killing human and from what I can tell,
42:54
Speaker 1: it sounds just yeah.
42:58
Speaker 2: This was in nineteen ninety four. There was a dolphin
43:00
Speaker 2: near sel Power, Brazil that was named tiaw and he
43:04
Speaker 2: was very friendly and gregarious and was well known around
43:08
Speaker 2: the area for like hanging out with people and had
43:12
Speaker 2: a lot of bad human interactions as a result of that.
43:16
Speaker 2: This guy was harassing them. Apparently there were also there
43:19
Speaker 2: was also a case where he injured twenty nine swimmers.
43:21
Speaker 2: They were trying to ride him and put popsicle sticks
43:23
Speaker 2: in his blowhole. This guy was harassing him and he
43:27
Speaker 2: and he basically nosed him in the abdomen and the
43:29
Speaker 2: guy died from internal bleeding.
43:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, like ti how he wasn't a naval dolphin by
43:34
Speaker 1: the way, he was just this is just the one
43:36
Speaker 1: example of somebody, oh yeah, of a dolphin killing a person.
43:39
Speaker 1: But yeah, he was very, very friendly and he had
43:41
Speaker 1: to put up with a lot of crud, but he
43:43
Speaker 1: would he would dish it back out if you pushed
43:45
Speaker 1: him past the past the point of no return. He
43:49
Speaker 1: apparently after the guy died. Tiaw is left and they
43:54
Speaker 1: haven't seen him since he fled the He fled the interview.
43:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's fleeing the interview. Dolphin watching is also you know,
44:03
Speaker 2: you might think like, hey, that's a pretty innocuous thing
44:05
Speaker 2: to ride around a boat and look at these things.
44:06
Speaker 1: Right.
44:08
Speaker 2: There are companies that supposedly do it responsibly, but that's
44:12
Speaker 2: after like, you know, we had to get involved and
44:14
Speaker 2: say hey, you can't feed them. That happened in the
44:17
Speaker 2: early nineteen nineties, Like they're getting hit by boats because
44:20
Speaker 2: they're trying to like say, hey, you want to see
44:22
Speaker 2: some dolphins, let's chum the water or whatever or not
44:25
Speaker 2: chum or whatever they use, and they put like time
44:29
Speaker 2: limits and distance limits. If those are followed, then you
44:32
Speaker 2: know that's better. But any kind of boat activity like
44:36
Speaker 2: that is just going to disturb their normal activity. And
44:39
Speaker 2: if there are too many boats around, these dolphins will
44:43
Speaker 2: just be like, all right, I got to relocate somewhere,
44:45
Speaker 2: maybe far away, and maybe they're not even able to
44:48
Speaker 2: do that safely.
44:49
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, yeah, in that sense, it's still not
44:55
Speaker 1: enough regulation or protection of the dolphins. But you can
44:58
Speaker 1: make a pretty good case that the United States has
45:01
Speaker 1: some good laws in place that do protect dolphins. There's
45:05
Speaker 1: one that was passed in nineteen seventy two, the Marine
45:08
Speaker 1: Mammal Protection Act, and among other things, that basically said
45:11
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to eat dolphin in the United States.
45:14
Speaker 1: They used to hunt dolphin and eat dolphin, and apparently
45:18
Speaker 1: people who have eaten dolphin are like, this pretty good,
45:21
Speaker 1: but you can't do that in the US anymore, not
45:23
Speaker 1: since the swing in seventies. And some people are like, well,
45:27
Speaker 1: you're eating dolphin when you eat can tuna. That seems
45:31
Speaker 1: to be quite untrue. There's people say that, yeah, there's
45:35
Speaker 1: a can tuna that says it's dolphins safe. That doesn't
45:39
Speaker 1: mean that dolphins aren't being caught in bycatch. It means
45:42
Speaker 1: that there's no dolphin in your tuna. But there are
45:47
Speaker 1: types of tuna fishing that that are much safer for
45:52
Speaker 1: dolphins than others. So if you care about that and
45:55
Speaker 1: you love cantuna, look for a cantuna that says it's
45:58
Speaker 1: either pole caught, polland line caught, troll caught free, school
46:04
Speaker 1: or school caught or fad free. Any of those are
46:09
Speaker 1: much less likely to accidentally catch and kill dolphins. When
46:13
Speaker 1: they're fishing for tuna.
46:15
Speaker 2: That's right. Uh, I always thought tuna was chicken of
46:18
Speaker 2: the sea.
46:19
Speaker 1: Now, did you ever see that episode of Jessica Simpson
46:23
Speaker 1: and Nichola ch'es Nope, there it was insane, Like I
46:27
Speaker 1: saw that.
46:27
Speaker 2: One and like, what, I don't even know what you're
46:30
Speaker 2: talking about.
46:30
Speaker 1: Oh, she was confused. She was eating a can of
46:32
Speaker 1: tuna of Chicken of the sea tuna, and she's like,
46:34
Speaker 1: I thought it was chicken. But then he's like, no,
46:37
Speaker 1: you know it's tuna. She's like, no, I know it's tuna,
46:40
Speaker 1: but I thought it was chicken. And it just like
46:42
Speaker 1: you're you'll start bleeding out of your ear if you
46:44
Speaker 1: try to follow it too closely. Interesting, it was something
46:48
Speaker 1: that show is actually surprisingly good.
46:50
Speaker 2: You watched it?
46:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, back in the day.
46:53
Speaker 2: That surprises me.
46:54
Speaker 1: It surprises me too now that I think about it.
46:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, joshup, now, wouldn't watch that? Right?
46:59
Speaker 1: Probably? Not?
47:00
Speaker 2: No, Josh of your Yeah for sure. Hey, I watched
47:05
Speaker 2: Brett Michael's Rock of Love. That was That's my one
47:08
Speaker 2: reality TV show.
47:09
Speaker 1: Scar Okay, that's not that's yeah. I was gonna say
47:12
Speaker 1: it's not too bad. It's pretty bad.
47:14
Speaker 2: It was pretty bad. But that's your that's your boy.
47:16
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he's one of them. The whole crew is
47:18
Speaker 1: my boys.
47:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, Cca Gang, that's right, Bobby Dolphin, Ricky Rockett, I
47:23
Speaker 2: got it.
47:24
Speaker 1: A nice work, Chuck.
47:26
Speaker 2: Dolphin hunting, though, still happens in other places around the world.
47:31
Speaker 2: We promised to talk about it a little bit. But
47:33
Speaker 2: there are drive hunts, very infamous ones that happen in Taiji, Japan,
47:38
Speaker 2: and the Faroe Islands. And there's another great documentary from
47:42
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine called The Cove about the Japanese hunt,
47:46
Speaker 2: and it's awful to watch. But they round up just
47:49
Speaker 2: thousands and thousands of dolphins and corral them and sell
47:53
Speaker 2: some to dolphin arians and slaughter the rest.
47:55
Speaker 1: You've seen it. I don't think I could see.
47:58
Speaker 2: It, man, Yeah, I don't bother you the deal.
48:00
Speaker 1: There's also another documentary from Netflix called Sea Spiracy, not
48:05
Speaker 1: the best name ever, but it's about the Ginda Drop,
48:08
Speaker 1: which is an annual dolphin hunt in the Faroe Islands
48:11
Speaker 1: off of Denmark, and it's essentially the same thing. They're
48:15
Speaker 1: driven into a corral and then killed by knife and
48:20
Speaker 1: I think in twenty twenty one, fourteen hundred dolphins were
48:23
Speaker 1: killed in the Genda drop that year, which was a
48:27
Speaker 1: record with knives. Jeez.
48:32
Speaker 2: We did talk about bycatch a little bit. There was
48:34
Speaker 2: a study in twenty twenty that found that since nineteen fifty,
48:37
Speaker 2: over eighty percent of Indian ocean dolphins may have been
48:41
Speaker 2: killed has bycatch eighty percent, with about eighty thousand total
48:46
Speaker 2: cetaceans caught each year. And then there's ghost fishing, which
48:49
Speaker 2: we did an episode on, and that's you know, when
48:52
Speaker 2: just the fishing industry as a whole ends up killing
48:57
Speaker 2: animals in the ocean. Ship strike and predation and starvation
49:01
Speaker 2: and getting caught up in nets and lines and all
49:04
Speaker 2: that awful stuff.
49:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, when they abandon their old fishing gear they can't
49:07
Speaker 1: use anymore and it just floats around and can kill
49:10
Speaker 1: animals in the sea for hundreds of years. It's nuts.
49:15
Speaker 1: We should end this on a high note, chuck. So
49:18
Speaker 1: just a reminder that dolphin moms use whistles to baby
49:22
Speaker 1: talk with their dolphin calves, that's right, and they play
49:26
Speaker 1: with each other. Yeah, for sure, that's it for dolphins. Everybody.
49:30
Speaker 1: Hopefully you like this one. We loved it. We might
49:33
Speaker 1: just do it again, who knows. But in the meantime,
49:36
Speaker 1: while we figure that out, it's time for listener maw.
49:42
Speaker 2: This is a remember the Bolkswagen episode in the Lemon ad.
49:46
Speaker 2: We weren't sure exactly what that was all about. Oh yeah,
49:49
Speaker 2: we heard from a lot of people. This is from LORI,
49:51
Speaker 2: and I'm trusting LORI because LORII is an advertising copywriter.
49:55
Speaker 1: Oh good, she says.
49:56
Speaker 2: Hey, guys, confusion about the famous VW Lemon ad Create
50:00
Speaker 2: to buy Bill Burnbock at DDB. The body copy is
50:03
Speaker 2: about VW's preoccupation with every detail. Each bug goes through
50:07
Speaker 2: a rigorous inspection process one hundred and eighty nine checkpoints.
50:10
Speaker 2: If there's any issue at all, no matter how small,
50:12
Speaker 2: the car doesn't leave the factory. So the car in
50:15
Speaker 2: this ad has a scratch on the glove compartment, so
50:18
Speaker 2: it's a Lemon. Apparently there was fine print in the
50:20
Speaker 2: ad that explained this. One more thing, though, guys, All
50:24
Speaker 2: good ad campaigns begin with an insight, a simple sentence,
50:28
Speaker 2: a nugget of emotional truth that determines how the brand
50:31
Speaker 2: speaks to consumers and how consumers relate to the brand.
50:34
Speaker 2: The insight for the BW Beetle you don't buy a
50:37
Speaker 2: Beetle you adopt it.
50:38
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's neat.
50:40
Speaker 2: We just got don Draper by Lori.
50:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, we did. Way to go, Lorii. That was a
50:44
Speaker 1: really great email. Hats off to you.
50:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Louri is a BW Beetle owner as well,
50:49
Speaker 2: so she ticks all the boxes for sure.
50:53
Speaker 1: I trust Lorii. That's a new stuff you should know.
50:56
Speaker 2: T Shirt agreed.
50:58
Speaker 1: Also, Chuck, I want to take a second to put
51:00
Speaker 1: in a correction which I think we mentioned before from
51:03
Speaker 1: the Zizian episode. So in it, I talked about Eliezer Yukowski,
51:08
Speaker 1: who is kind of like his Machine Intelligence Research Institute
51:12
Speaker 1: was kind of at the center of the Zizians, like
51:15
Speaker 1: that's where they all met. Yeah, and the Machine Intelligence
51:18
Speaker 1: Research Institute is trying to figure out how to create
51:21
Speaker 1: an artificial intelligence that is friendly to humans, that's aligned
51:25
Speaker 1: with human goals and doesn't wipe us out. And I
51:28
Speaker 1: said that Eliezer had basically thrown in the towel and
51:31
Speaker 1: was like, this is not it's too late, We're not
51:34
Speaker 1: going to make it. We got an email from Malo Borgan,
51:39
Speaker 1: who was the CEO of the of Miry, and he said, hey,
51:43
Speaker 1: you got it a little wrong. Eliezer's book that's coming out.
51:47
Speaker 1: It's called If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies? Is not
51:50
Speaker 1: about throwing in the towel. It's saying like, we're right
51:53
Speaker 1: there on the edge, but when there's still time, we
51:56
Speaker 1: can still figure out how to make an AI as
51:59
Speaker 1: super intellent jan AI that doesn't wipe out humanity. And
52:03
Speaker 1: here's how, and let's get busy. Now. It's kind of
52:06
Speaker 1: like I'll call the arms to get humanity in action.
52:09
Speaker 1: So I definitely flubbed that one. And a huge thank
52:14
Speaker 1: you to Mallow for letting us know, but also letting
52:16
Speaker 1: us know really gently.
52:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's really nice about it. Yeah.
52:19
Speaker 1: So the book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, It's
52:23
Speaker 1: by Eliezer Yudkowski, who is an amazing thinker and his
52:27
Speaker 1: collaborator Nate Sores, comes out September sixteenth. If you want
52:32
Speaker 1: to go buy it, fantastic, fantastic, And if you want
52:36
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us, like Mallow or Lori,
52:39
Speaker 1: you can send us an email to send it off
52:41
Speaker 1: to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
52:48
Speaker 2: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
52:51
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52:55
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