< Dolphins
Out of context: Reply #23
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http://www.nwf.org/nationalwildl…
Scientists began discovering dead harbor porpoises washing up on Scottish shores eight years ago. In many instances, the little porpoises´ bodies looked relatively unscathed but postmortem work found that the animals´ internal organs were shattered. In subsequent years, dozens of the dead, battered creatures surfaced in Scottish waters.
"The cause of their internal injuries was a mystery for several years," says Ben Wilson, a dolphin expert at the University of Aberdeen who was part of a team that eventually solved the puzzle with the aid of a videotape shot by an amateur dolphin watcher. The deaths, Wilson discovered, are caused by beatings delivered by the harbor porpoise´s larger relative, the bottlenose dolphin, a creature familiar to television watchers from the series Flipper. The bottlenose, it seems, can deliver devastating, quick blows with its beak and tail. The discovery is just one of several recent findings that are changing the way we look at one of the ocean´s most fascinating creatures.
Behind the dolphin´s fixed, smilelike gaze and remarkable intelligence lurks a creature that sometimes indulges in acts of violence against both other species and its own kin. That fact is being substantiated by dolphin-behavior expert Richard Conner, whose research reveals that male Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphins form groups that function much like roving gangs of human hoodlums. They clash with other groups and rob one another of the great prize of the dolphin realm: mates. Sometimes, Connor notes, two groups of males will form an alliance to fight another group or alliance of groups. His work is preliminary, a scant hint at the secrets still to be wrested from dolphin society.