Do dolphins and whales actually play together, or are the dolphins just harassing the whales? Researchers sought to answer this question by looking through hundreds of photographs and video clips in a new study to determine if these species are mutually playing, or if their interactions are all one-sided.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The team looked at 199 separate instances where baleen whales and dolphins were seen together, involving a total of 19 different species. While most of these events were taken from social media videos and images, two of the interactions were recorded using animal-borne videos, from two humpback whales in Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re out on the water, you often see whales and dolphins interacting and as a scientist, you can\u2019t help but wonder why,\u201d co-author and Master’s graduate Olivia Crawley said in a\u00a0statement<\/a>. \u201cHaving the opportunity to document these observations and observe some of the behavioural patterns like bow riding by dolphins and close touches was intriguing.\u201d<\/p>\n The researchers spent time identifying which species were involved in each interaction and where the behaviors took place in relation to the body of the whale, which was divided into rostrum (head), flank (body), and fluke (tail).\u00a0<\/p>\n The whale and dolphin<\/a> behaviors were classified into different behavior types, including rolling and head and tail movements for the whales, and bow riding, belly rolls, and breaching for the dolphin species.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n For the different species seen in the interactions, humpback whales<\/a> featured in the most videos (68 percent), followed by gray whales and fin whales. For the dolphins, 13 different species were identified, including a majority of bottlenose, with common dolphins and Pacific white-sided dolphins also featuring heavily.\u00a0<\/p>\n