“Did They Know What Had Happened on Our Boat?”
Page Six of remarkable, inexplicable stories of killer whale behavior toward humans in the wild.
During several decades of research on free-living dolphins in the Bahamas, Denise Herzing, founder and Research Director of the Wild Dolphin Project, got familiar with particular individuals. Apparently, the feeling was mutual. After being gone for eight months each year, the researchers would return and all would reunite.
“Joyous is probably the word I would use to describe it,” wrote Herzing, “And even though I am committed to studying and understanding the dolphins scientifically, I have no problem also feeling like they are friends, of another species, but clearly aware, with feelings and memories, and this was a reunion of friends.”
Perhaps they were using another sensory system, one that we humans neither possess nor suspect.
At the end of multi-week research trips, she writes, “The dolphins seemed to know we were leaving and gave us a grand send-off. I have often wondered how they knew.”
Seemingly “telepathic” behavior occurred in a more somber incident. At the beginning of a research trip, as Herzing’s vessel approached the familiar dolphins that she’d been studying, they “greeted us but they acted very unusual,” not coming within 50 feet of the boat. They refused invitations to bow-ride, also odd. And when the captain slipped into the water, one came briefly nearer and then suddenly fled.
At that point, someone discovered that one of the people aboard had just died during a nap in his bunk. Spooky enough. But then, as the boat turned to head back to port, “the dolphins came to the side of our boat, not riding the bow as usual but instead flanking us fifty feet away in an aquatic escort… they paralleled us in an organized fashion.”
Bottlenose dolphins. Credit: Carl Safina
After attending to the sad necessities ashore, when the boat returned to the dolphin area, “The dolphins greeted us normally, rode the bow, and frolicked like they normally did.”
After 25 years with those dolphins, Herzing never again saw them behave the way they did when the boat had a dead man aboard. Perhaps, in a way we don’t understand, dolphin sonar lets them scan inside a boat and somehow realize and communicate among each other that a man in a bunk has a heart that is still. Perhaps they detected that a human had died using another sensory system, one that we humans neither possess nor suspect.
And what does it mean for dolphins to become solemn in response to a human death?
Next – Page Seven: Questions Unsettling, Unshakeable and Disturbing.
All posts in this series are excerpted from Beyond Words; What Animals Think and Feel by Carl Safina.
1 Comment
Dolphins, sheep, dogs have a hidden intelligence not yet seen or understood by humans. Probably could be weaponised for good or perhaps evil. Animals can communicate telepathically and also on a higher group emotional level. They are more complex and intelligent and their lives are different from ours. They have more love. And enjoy food as a tool to survive. The dolphins new was a dead human because they could smell or perhaps see the spirit passing through the gaps.