Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Watch Out for Entrepreneurial Dolphins

Smart critter!

At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, Kelly the dolphin has built up quite a reputation. All the dolphins at the institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. In this way, the dolphins help to keep their pools clean.

Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on. This behaviour is interesting because it shows that Kelly has a sense of the future and delays gratification. She has realised that a big piece of paper gets the same reward as a small piece and so delivers only small pieces to keep the extra food coming. She has, in effect, trained the humans.

Her cunning has not stopped there. One day, when a gull flew into her pool, she grabbed it, waited for the trainers and then gave it to them. It was a large bird and so the trainers gave her lots of fish. This seemed to give Kelly a new idea. The next time she was fed, instead of eating the last fish, she took it to the bottom of the pool and hid it under the rock where she had been hiding the paper. When no trainers were present, she brought the fish to the surface and used it to lure the gulls, which she would catch to get even more fish. After mastering this lucrative strategy, she taught her calf, who taught other calves, and so gull-baiting has become a hot game among the dolphins.

[Full story here.]

I've commented on the referring sites that this dolphin understands capitalism better than most, if not all, of our Democratic Congress Critters. She recognizes the value of paper money (her collected litter) and has perfected a method of investment in the future (tearing off just a small piece of paper at a time and saving a fish to use as bait for the next sea gull) that works for her.

(h/t to both Tyler Cowen @ Marginal Revolution, who posted it first, and Bitter @ Snowflakes In Hell who directed readers there.)

2 comments:

Rev. Paul said...

That is impressive behavior. I'm not sure most people would think that far ahead; in fact, that single fact may be the most significant indicator of "what's wrong with America."

(sighs)

threecollie said...

That is simply amazing!