Dynaverse.net
Off Topic => Ten Forward => Topic started by: Stormbringer on September 03, 2005, 04:49:00 pm
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Clever Whales Bait Gulls With Fish
Associated Press
posted: 02 September 2005
09:35 am ET
NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario (AP) -- An enterprising young killer whale at Marineland has figured out how to use fish as bait to catch seagulls -- and shared his strategy with his fellow whales.
Michael Noonan, a professor of animal behavior at Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y., made the discovery by accident while studying orca acoustics.
“One day I noticed one of the young whales appeared to have come up with a procedure for luring gulls down to the pool,'' the professor said. “I found it interesting so I noted it in my log.''
First, the young whale spit regurgitated fish onto the surface of the water, then sank below the water and waited.
If a hungry gull landed on the water, the whale would surge up to the surface, sometimes catching a free meal of his own.
Noonan watched as the same whale set the same trap again and again.
Within a few months, the whale's younger half brother adopted the practice. Eventually the behavior spread and now five Marineland whales supplement their diet with fresh fowl, the scientist said.
“It looked liked one was watching while the other tried,'' Noonan said of the whale's initial behavior.
The capacity to come up with the gull-baiting strategy and then share the technique with others -- known as cultural learning in the scientific world -- was once believed to be one of those abilities that separated humans from other animals.
But biologists have since proven certain animals, including dolphins and chimps, do this.
“This is an example in which a new behavior spread through a population,'' Noonan said. “We had the opportunity to see a tradition form and spread in exactly the way that cultures do in humans.''
He first shared his research earlier this month at the U.S. Animal Behavior Society Conference in Utah. Since then, he said, his phone hasn't stopped ringing.
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Yikes, imagine if they ever released one of these guys back into the wild. Scared gulls. Scared gulls moving inland. O sh*te.
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... O sh*te.
... all over the place.
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If we could only train cats to lure the gulls, pigeons, salesmen and other vermin that way.
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Whale: [CHOMP!] "Gotcha Sucker!"
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Couple of neat things...I went to Canisius for a year before joining the USAF..3 of my cousins graduated from there...
and don't let the Mormons find out..the seagull is the state bird of Utah...
Mike