For anyone interested in learning about dolphins and dolphin trainers (while I think about whether I think I have enough material to start an "Ask The . . . " thread), I’ll recommend three good books, if you can find them. I’d be surprised if any are still in print, but maybe libraries or used book shops will have these (or maybe you can find them on Amazon):
Lads Before The Wind by Karen Pryor. She and her husband Tap Pryor founded Sea Life Park in Hawaii as a combined entertainment / research facility. The public dolphin shows were intended to raise funds for marine research, which they apparently did for many years. Karen Pryor was the first head trainer and curator. Here, she relates her memoirs and anecdotes.
The Porpoise Watcher by Ken Norris. He was a famed (in the field) dolphin researcher, known as the “Modern-Day Grand-Daddy of dolphin research”. He basically founded the modern-day field. He was part of the team that founded Marineland Of The Pacific (or maybe it was a place or Florida, or both). He tells his stories and anecdotes. He spent some time in Hawaii at Sea Life Park, so some of his stories overlap with Karen Pryor’s stories, but told from a different point of view.
Thinking Dolphins, Talking Whales by Frank Robson. One of the founding participants in a marine park in New Zealand (maybe it was the first such park there). He claimed to have a life-long gift of mental telepathy, and claimed to have trained the dolphins telepathically. :dubious: Yet, oxymoronically, he claimed that dolphin training was trivially easy and anyone could do it. Midway through his career he quit the job and became a save-the-whales activist. Half his book is about his dolphin training work, and half is about his save-the-whales work.
There is no evidence or research to suggest it’s anything more than a case of us as humans trying to identify those characteristics in the animals.
The animals just have odd and erratic behavior at times, probably and I’m going out on a limb here… because they are animals.
While still interesting and fascinating at times, we fall into a trap of NEEDING to associate the ‘relation’ between animal and human behavior (often in attempts to justify treating animals equal to humans). In doing so we lose some of the joy that makes animals worth owning or keeping as pets.
It’s like a magic trick - if you figure it all out and explain it, it loses it’s luster.
But dismissing it out of hand as different from human reactions is exactly the same kind of trap. This article makes an interesting case for accepting some behaviour in animals just the way we see it.
Why would we go out of our way to explain that when animals look like they’re being kind or look like they have a sense of humour, they actually aren’t or don’t just because they are animals? I think we do very often anthropomorphise, but that doesn’t mean recognising emotion in animals is always wrong.
I think any animal capable of having fun also has the capability of some level of humor since fun and humor are connected. Any intelligent species who can enjoy some form of fun and games are also capable of the concept of humor. Watching sea otters play, it’s pretty obvious they’re having fun and that they’re enjoying humor among themselves.
I don’t know if this counts as a sense of humour or not (probably the contrary as he is a rather aggressive type, I understand). There is a chimp in a zoo in Sweden that has astonished researchers by stashing stones and other objects here and there in the enclosure so that he can throw them at unsuspecting onlookers.
Parrot bites human’s finger and laughs hysterically.
A parrot belonging to my brother and sister-in-law would do this to everybody unwary enough to come over when summoned. He was generally not bitey, however, if he didn’t call out to you first.
Mr. Shoe’s family used to have a black lab that would walk up to female visitors to the home and, if they were wearing a long skirt, would tuck his nose under the hem and then flip his head up really quickly. I imagine he enjoyed the reaction.
I get frogs in my pool, and it’s not unusual for a big fat bullfrog to have some fun with my dogs. The dogs notice a frog swimming near the edge of the pool. The frog swims closer and stretches its head out of the water, with an expression that resembles a kid sticking his tongue out at someone. The dogs start jumping around and poking their noses closer and closer to the frog. When they get too close, the frog splashes water in their faces and swims to the other side of the pool. The dogs dash madly to the other side, where the game repeats. This goes on until the dogs get distracted. Part of the game is that the dogs have to run halfway around the pool while the frog gets to take a direct route.
The frog is definitely having a good time. It drives the dogs crazy. They never jump in the pool, probably because they know they’d look stupid and it would be pointless.
I had a similar experience with an amoeba in science class, definitely had a sense of humor, there was no denying it.
This amoeba would cling to the side of the petri dish obviously waiting, practically begging for someone to tap the dish with a pencil, before then swimming to the other side.
It was obvious this amoeba knew what it was doing and having a jolly good time doing it.
I pleaded the other students to “stop! You’re allowing yourselves to be manipulated!
You’re being played for fools!”
When I had ferrets in college and roomed with a girl with two cats, one of my ferrets and one of her cats worked out a very similar game, involving the couch. Ferret pokes head out from under couch, cat bops ferret gently on top of head, ferret disappears and re-emerges a few inches away. Picture a Whack-A-Mole game and you’re pretty close. The funny part was, my ferret would lie there, head poking out, waiting for the game to resume, if the cat needed to, say, spend some time licking her crotch in between rounds.
I get it, you’re making fun of my frog story. The thing is that the frog has options. A frog in the pool spends most of its time swimming around under water, which the dogs don’t notice. The frog has to make an effort to taunt the dogs. It doesn’t have to swim directly across the pool and float there waiting for the dogs to come around for more of the game.
There is a squirrel in my Mom’s back yard that intentionally taunts the neighbor’s dogs. When they come out to play it will make it’s way down the fence to where they are and sit and chitter at them while they gather around and yap and yap. Doesn’t matter where it is when they come out, it will find a safe way to the fence, run down to where they are, and sit and taunt.
To whom it may interest: More dolphin stories in this thread, on the subject of that dolphin at Sea World Orlando that mistook the little kid for a fish. I posted a few stories there, starting at post #13.
