Dolphins Have Been Caught Beating Up Baby Manatees, But It Could Be They’re Just Rough Housing
Over the course of two decades, dolphins have been found to attack the babies of manatees, their cousin species.
During this period, the oddly aggressive behavior has been spotted 10 times. The majority of cases took place in the last eight years.
The bottlenose dolphins targeted manatee calves that were orphaned and even some that were still with their mothers.
Many of the manatee calves were injured from the attacks and covered with scratches from the dolphins’ teeth. Sadly, one died from its wounds.
“We report 10 cases of interactions between bottlenose dolphins and Antillean manatee calves along the coast of Belize in the Caribbean Sea,” said Eric Angel Ramos, a co-author of the study and a researcher at the Fundación Internacional para la Naturaleza y la Sustentabilidad.
“We observed dolphins interact with manatee babies in various ways, sometimes swimming with the baby calmly, and in other cases, getting aggressive with calves and biting and hitting them. Four of the 10 cases we documented involved manatee babies that were recovered and had dolphin bite marks on them.”
The attacks were recorded between 1999 and 2020 off the coast of Belize in South America. Most of them happened between 2015 and 2020.
Bottlenose dolphins live in pods. They are very social creatures, and they are considered to be one of the world’s most intelligent species.
Many of the dolphins’ interactions with the manatees resulted in injuries for the manatees, but it was unclear whether the dolphins were trying to inflict harm on purpose.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
In one of the cases, several of the dolphins were observed to be swimming alongside a calf and nudging it toward the water’s surface, while others slammed into calves and launched them into the air. These cases could be interpreted as attempts to care for the calves rather than an act of aggression.
“We don’t know if they are really trying to hurt them or not. Dolphins play rough. They don’t have hands, so when they socialize or mate or play, they tend to bite each other and hit each other with their tails,” Ramos said.
“They may be treating manatees roughly but not actually trying to hurt them. However, bottlenose dolphins are also known to kill baby dolphins of their species and probably others. So the drive to attack and kill young could help explain how they treat babies of other species.”
The dolphins’ aggression toward the manatees could also stem from viewing them as competition for food and other resources.
Overall, dolphins display complex behaviors, and it is difficult to understand such interactions because they do not occur often. Further research needs to be done to learn more about why the dolphins engage in this behavior.
More About:Animals
Read This Next
