The way a young dolphin quickly nods its head creates a silver ring in front of it is like magic. The ring is a bubble-filled torus, two feet in diameter, without rising to the surface! It remains vertical, like the rim of a magic mirror, or a gateway to a new dimension
For a long time, the dolphin admires its own creation from different angles. After admiring, the dolphin quickly shoots a small silver ring into a large structure, which collapses into small bubbles. Then he pushes the ring, which remains only a few inches from the mouth, perhaps 20 feet per cycle lasting up to tens of seconds. Then, stopping again, he touches the ring one last time, and then hits it, causing the ring to break into thousands of small bubbles, which (as they should) rise to the surface of the water. After a few seconds of thinking, the dolphin creates a new ring. This is not fantasy, but reality. And not magic, but only an amazing phenomenon. Dolphins rarely behave this way. The first time we were able to observe the process of creating rings in the game of two baby dolphins. This gives us a little more insight into the high level of control that dolphins achieve in their aquatic exercise, and also underlines the fact that we can still learn about dolphins just by watching them.
Photo: Credit unknown / paranormal-news.ru
I first observed this phenomenon on one of my rare trips to the Delphis laboratory. Researcher Ken Martin said that "… two babies, Tinkerbel and Maui, created these rings." I replied: “Wow! How the hell do they do this ?! Try to take photos and videos of the process. It's just incredible! " Ken, along with Sushi's assistant Psarakos and another programmer from the center, collected a large amount of photographic and video materials about the silver rings, which made it possible to analyze the physics of the phenomenon and simply watch in slow motion how the dolphins release rings.
As it turns out, small silver rings are not the only toy dolphins make themselves. One dolphin was able to create a silver spiral about 20 feet long that could appear in a split second and remain stationary in the water, while the dolphin swam around, observing it with eyes and sonar. He then snatched a small silver ring from the spiral to play with. At this moment, the rest of the spiral disintegrated into bubbles, which "remembered" to fly to the surface.
It was a wonderful time to reflect. My attempts to reproduce these rings in a pool only resulted in the nose picking up water, but my guesses were confirmed - with a better and more rigorous explanation - by Sushi's close friend in the fluid dynamics class, Hans Ramm of the Institute of Oceanography.
There is no doubt that it is so. However, understanding the physics of the process should not diminish our admiration. After all, dolphins have learned to understand and control the properties of their habitat, using this knowledge only in games. Silver rings are vortex rings with an air core. Their nature is similar to the nature of the spirals that dolphins create. Invisible, spinning vortices in the water are created by the dolphin's dorsal fin as it moves and turns. According to Hans: “The vortex lines created by dolphins tend to assume a more stable spiral shape. When dolphins break the line, the ends of the spiral gather together in closed rings. According to Bernoulli's law, a high speed is created around the core of the spiral, in the area of reduced pressure, compared to the outer boundary. Air enters the rings with the help of air bubbles from the dolphin's blowhole. The energy of the water vortex is sufficient to prevent bubbles from rising to the surface for a rather long time - about 10 seconds. There must also be a separate mechanism for creating small rings that dolphins can create with a quick nod of their heads.
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Photo: Credit unknown / paranormal-news.ru
It is possible that dolphins learned to blow these amazing silver rings back in the days when our ancestors had not yet descended from the trees. However, it seems that this is a rather rare behavior, because earlier it was seen only in a separate group of dolphins, described by Diana Reis and Jean Ostman in "Sea World". “The fact that ring blowing is rare, and we have two cubs doing it, suggests that one learned it from the other,” comments Ken Maarten. "Whether it was a case of copying actions or one 'taught' the other, we do not know, but we would really like to find out."
The environment also seems to influence ring blowing: “Babies were more willing to create rings like this when they were alone than when an adult dolphin was swimming in the aquarium. They stopped throwing rings altogether when there were more adults in the aquarium than cubs,”Sushi said. “When the dolphin was alone with me, two or three rings were regularly observed in the aquarium at the same time. He quickly swam up to me in an agitated state, and then swam away to let more rings go."
The reaction to the publication of the materials on watching dolphins making rings have been overwhelming - they literally fascinate people. Dr. Ken Norris, a leading dolphin expert, has never observed this phenomenon before. Robert Wolf of Apple Computer's Advanced Design Group made a short film about ring blowing. Arthur Clarke thinks they are wonderful, but challenged my suggestion that this should be the first form of "extraterrestrial art" to indicate possible "artistic" abilities of other animals.
As for me, I consider it a form of "art": the creation and observation of artifacts not created by the human mind has no other meaning than aesthetic and entertaining. Do not humanize the actions of other species - treat them the same way as people. But after you watch how dolphins create these moving sculptures - how they admire their offspring from different angles - and then destroy the rings with a bite - you need to come up with a long logical chain to find another explanation.
One can and should argue about silver rings, but the beauty of these rings is undeniable. If this is evidence of "self-awareness" and other "mental" functions of dolphins, then I think we should think again: who are they - these creatures that rotate the silver lasso solely for entertainment? And who are we if we don't value and protect them?