Dolphins Don't Need Sight to See

A team at the Dolphin Research Center in Grassy Key, Florida, carried out the very first experiment with blindfolded dolphins, to see how they imitate others.

Dolphins are very intelligent creatures and ever since people started working with them, they have never ceased to amaze us with their tricks.

The latest in date is the 'copy-the-moves-without-seeing-them' trick, and you can see for yourself in the video below.

It is known that dolphins can mimic sounds and actions, but researchers were quite amazed when a dolphin imitated something without seeing it, and this had them think about the senses that could be used to do so.

The name of this dolphin is Tanner, and he had been previously trained to imitate other dolphins visually, so when his trainer gives a hand signal, Tanner knows to copy the moves of the dolphin next to him.

To test the way he performed this task without sight, Tanner's eyes were covered with plastic eye cups after he was given the signal.

Once the eyes were covered, a second dolphin performed an action, or produced a sound familiar to Tanner, and the researchers observed his ability to replicate it.

Of course, the dolphin had no problems reproducing sounds blindfolded, but when he started reproducing actions with his eyes covered, that's when the researchers were blown away.

Imitating actions you don't see is really amazing, and even if Tanner made some mistakes, the moves weren't completely false.

Kelly Jaakkola, a member of the team, said that “since we know he wasn't using sight, he had to be using sound.

“Either by recognizing the characteristic sound that the behavior makes, like you or I may recognize the sound of hands clapping, or by using echolocation.”

Tanner did in fact use echolocation more often when blindfolded, but when he did so, he didn't always identify the move correctly, so the team thinks he may have recognized some actions by their characteristic sounds.

Echolocation is a sensory system in dolphins (and bats), in which usually high-pitched sounds are emitted and their echoes interpreted to determine the direction and distance of objects.

Further research is necessary, but it seems that dolphins can adapt the senses they use to imitate an action, New Scientist reports.