The first time Sonja Wild saw a dolphin using an empty seashell to scoop an unwitting fish into its mouth, she got so excited she almost forgot to photograph it.
This rare and unique hunting technique is called “shelling” or “conching.” A hungry dolphin will chase a hard-to-catch fish into an empty seashell, then ferry the shell to the surface where the dolphin uses its beak to jostle the prey into its mouth.
“Seeing it for the first time was just a ‘wow’ moment because you do not expect a shell popping up right next to the boat that is being carried by a dolphin. You kind of, like, drop everything,” said Wild, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Konstanz and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany.
“I was definitely mind-blown,” she told As It Happens guest host Duncan McCue.
Wild is the lead author of a new study in the journal Current Biology that documents how conching has spread through dolphin populations as the clever creatures teach each other how to do it.
Scientists have observed instances of conching going back at least 10 years, though it has always been a rare sight.
Wild says there was a major uptick in sightings in Shark Bay, off the coast of Western Australia, after a 2011 marine heat wave killed off a large number of sea snails, leaving their shells ripe for the picking.
Wild and her colleagues have been observing the Shark Bay dolphins for years, mapping their social and genetic relationships. Between 2007 and 2018, they identified 1,000 individual dolphins and saw 19 of them engage in conching 42 times.
While conching still appears to be quite rare, Wild says all the dolphins who do it know each other.
Dolphins off the coast of Western Australia are teaching each other how to use empty shells to trap and eat fish, new research has found. (Sonja Wild/Dolphin Innovation Project)
While analyzing their population data, the researchers found that conching spreads horizontally within dolphin generations, meaning from peer to peer, as opposed to vertically, from mother to calf.
“That is indeed quite special because dolphins normally rely very much on their mothers for foraging behaviour,” Wild said.
“And we’re now showing for the first time that they are, indeed, capable of learning foraging behaviour outside of the mother-calf bond.”
Sonja Wild is a behaviorral ecologist at the University of Konstanz and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour. (Submitted by Sonja Wild/Photo-Spice)
Janet Mann, a dolphin researcher at Georgetown University who wasn’t involved in the study, told the New York Times it’s impossible to say definitively that peer imitation is the only way dolphins learn about conching, noting we’ve “barely scratched the water’s surface” when it comes to understanding the behaviour.
Wild agrees.
“It is very much possible that some dolphins may have learned this by themselves, by just interacting with their shells and then by accident kind of lifting them above the surface,” she said.
She says it’s possible, too, that some dolphins are passing the skill down to their young. But her team’s models “clearly show that the majority have learned from their peers.”
Why do they do it?
Wild says she’s not sure why dolphins use shells to trap and eat fish.
She says they are very playful creatures, and it could be as simple as “just a little bit of fun to get your meal in a different way than usual.”
But whatever their motivation, it proves they can adapt to a changing environment and pick up new skills — an ability that could help them survive as climate change alters ocean populations and makes food more scarce, she said.
Wild has been studying the dolphins of Shark Bay, Australia, for years. (Sonja Wild/Dolphin Innovation Project)
“Learning from your mother is very useful in kind of stable environments that don’t change, because the parental behaviour is tested and stable and adapted to the environment. But as soon as the environment changes, the behaviour may become outdated or inefficient or even maladaptive,” Wild said.
“And in that case, it’s beneficial if you start looking around to see what other dolphins are doing.”
‘Humans are not the only ones with culture’
Picking up new tricks from friends is rare in the animal kingdom, Wild said. It’s a form of learning that’s usually only observed in primates, including apes, chimpanzees and, of course, humans.
“It certainly helps to understand their intelligence by knowing that they are capable of innovating such remarkable behaviour, but it also helps us to understand that dolphin societies are maybe not that different from us humans,” Wild said.
“They have very complex social relationships. They use tools. They are able to learn to use tools from one another. So it kind of helps our understanding that humans are not the only ones with culture.”
Written by Sheena Goodyear. Interview produced by Katie Geleff and Jeanne Armstrong.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
