They were filming it with joy- until they saw the dolphin flip and spin what we now know to be a baby porpoise, with such force that its back broke and its tissue was badly damaged. This was solved when some civilians taking a boat ride were watching a bottle-nosed dolphin playing with its baby. But which animal? Who would attack baby porpoises and dolphins? However, on closer examination the injuries showed broken ribs, crushed lungs and livers, broken backs, crushed spines, and so much internal bleeding- they knew this was a targeted animal attack. The mangled, horrible condition of the bodies was a mystery, as marine biologists wondered what could have killed them in this way? Initially, it was thought to be “blast injuries” from sonic air-guns used by the US Navy underwater. It all began around 2008 when there were bodies of baby porpoises AND baby dolphins wash up on the shore of Virginia, and the East Coast of Scotland, round about the same time. Dolphins are very, very, intelligent, sensitive and social, but sometimes that means they find creative ways to entertain themselves in the deep blue, and by creative I mean absolutely psychotic. Humans are not the only creatures capable of horrific crimes that feed our egos. Mother Nature can be cruel in all kinds of ways. Horrible as it seems, we sometimes have the naïvety to assume that “Mother Nature is cruel” extends only to predator-prey relationships. It does seem to be motivated by hormonal cues, as the phenomenon has only been observed during the animals' breeding season.Dolphins are smart, intelligent, amazing creatures that we all know and love, but also they’re horrible rapists and murderers. It's even possible that they've learned the behavior from seeing it done. Perhaps the seals are practicing for when they're old and strong enough to defend their own harems. "Happy Feet" released into wild 31 photosĪll of the assailants have belonged to what Haddad and his team call "the bad boys club," a group of sub-adult males who don't have harems of females to mate with, and half of the attacks have taken place on a "bachelors' beach," where there are no females. It is possible, the researchers reason, that this mate deprivation has driven unattached adolescents to extreme measures. While the seals exist in a one-to-one male-to-female ratio, a single adult male will have a harem of five to seven females. Marion Island is the only place in the world where fur seals prey on penguins on land as opposed to in the water. But the numbers have rebounded to the point where the animals are now spreading out to new beaches - including those inhabited by king penguin colonies. (There is some rather graphic video footage on YouTube.)īy the early 1900s, poachers had decimated the populations of seals on Marion Island. Eventually, the seal got off the penguin, and the bird was able to get up and join a group of fellow king penguins on the beach. Two bouts of thrusting in a copulatory fashion was intermitted by a break during which the seal kept the penguin pinned to the ground with its flipper, but did not seem interested in it. The seal's erect penis was clearly visible. It lay on top of the penguin and started thrusting its hips in a copulatory fashion. In their paper, published in November in the journal Polar Biology, the researchers described one observation thusly: The seal ran up to the penguin and bumped it down. In one tragic case, the seal killed and partially devoured its victim. In three of the instances, the penguin was released after the act. (Birds, including penguins, have one hole called a cloaca that serves excretory and reproductive functions.) Penetration could only be confirmed in one instance, though it was likely in all of them. In all four cases of what Haddad and his collaborators call sexual coercion, a seal chased, captured and mounted a penguin of unknown sex, then attempted to copulate with it "several times with periods of rest in between." The birds remained pinned down for the duration. "It's such a big gap, it's unheard of." Two king penguins "This is very weird because it's hair and feathers, mammals and birds," he said. But this was something different entirely. It's even possible that a seal might to try to reproduce with a sea lion. Haddad explained that it's not out of the ordinary to see a bull of one species of seal courting the female of another species and herding her into his harem. Why is this happening more often now?' So we decided to write a paper and come up with a hypothesis," Haddad told CBS News. "For the past 50 years, there have been people once a week on the beaches and this had never been seen.
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