Dolphins, Jerks of the Sea: Part 3

Show me a person that hates dolphins and I'll show you a person with no heart. People love dolphins because they're so much like humans, but we're jerks and so are they. Let's dive right in to:

Part 3: Infanticide

Again, show me a person who hates baby dolphins and well... you see where I'm going.

In the summer of 1997, a dead baby bottlenose dolphin washed onto a Virginia beach. Its body was badly bruised; it had broken ribs and a punctured lung. One telltale clue gave scientists a grim surprise: bite marks that matched the exact pattern of the teeth of an adult bottlenose. Researchers concluded an adult dolphin had murdered a young baby or calf, a practice known in nature as infanticide.

Now scientists are amassing startling evidence that suggests the beloved animals have a violent side as well. Dolphins seem to be killing porpoises, a related sea mammal, and baby dolphins in droves, wielding their long snouts as clubs and their jagged teeth to slash their victims to death. Can it be that dolphin behavior simply resembles that of most large animals, who are capable of being playful or violent by turns?

As if that weren't enough, look at this possible connection to Part 2: Ruthless Killers

But why would bottlenoses kill porpoises? Since harbor porpoises are roughly the same size as baby dolphins, Scottish researchers speculate that dolphins may practice their infant-killing techniques on porpoises. Infanticide is not uncommon in nature, especially among mammals. When food supplies dwindle, a mother gerbil, for example, may eat the weakest of her babies to ensure she has enough energy to produce food for her other infants. Scientists theorize that bottlenose dolphins may have more in common with these "cannibal animals" (see sidebar, right) than was previously thought.

ACK!!!!! Say it ain't so flipper.

Next week it just gets worse.

Dolphins, Jerks of the Sea: Part 2

Dolphins! So winsome and likeable, also, such jerks. Last time we covered the lascivious malignancy of these beloved creatures. And while I love the horny sacks of blubber, the juicy details of their transgressions are too good to keep out of the blog. This time we're going further into the seedy underbelly of Dolphin life with....

Part 2: Ruthless Killers

[WARNING: if you're under 18 you should make sure reading this is ok with your parents, that means you Wallace, if your parents haven't looked at this blog yet they should.]

Now, the murderous impulses of Dolphins is going to cover a couple of weeks here, so we'll just get started here with murder based on racism.

That's right, Dolphins are racist pricks. *Pause for GASP* Not all dolphins, and in the history of every human on this earth is an ancestor who killed someone in another tribe. That's just the honest truth of how human society evolved so get over it.

Dolphins have often been accused of killing other cetations, porpoises specifically, and engaging in vicious war against other pods of dolphins of the same and different species.

The differences between dolphins, porpoise and whale species are pretty specific, but basically, if it's less than a certain number of feet long on average the cetation species is a porpoise, if it's on average longer than that but smaller than a Killer Whale, it's a dolphin, and longer than that you've got a whale species. These species, despite occasional violence will often pod together when migrating and get along well together in captivity. Often morale among whales and dolphins actually increases in captivity when more than one cetation species is housed together.

My point here is that the species here are pretty similar, yet dolphins will brutally attack porpoises. That's a jerk move.

Of course, this won't shock you at all when you read next weeks installment...

Pirate Links- Squidly

Here's a really entertaining site about searching for a specific sea monster....

THE RED DEMON!!!!!
I have a soft spot in my heart for these particular creatures, they're creepy, heartless predators, but they're also kinda cute.