Humans oftentimes violate the "law of the jungle," the territorial claims of carnivores and cornered or injured beasts who survive on instinct. For all the good and peaceful interactions we have most of the time, there are a few that show that some element of danger is ever present.
In the Rebirth Stories (Jataka Tales) of the Buddha, animals can talk. They communicate with one another, of course, but they are also able to cross the veil between their domain and ours. Cross species communication is real. Just ask an animal communicator:
Today is World Dolphin Day. Of course, we don't have to worry in the States because we worship this sea mammal on April 14th on NATIONAL DOLPHIN DAY each year when we recognize the social and intelligent mammals of the sea.
#NationalDolphinDay
Hey, Baby, come here often? - I'm a bird.
Dolphins are cetacean mammals that are related to whales and porpoises (and orcas or killer "whales" are actually giant dolphins). They range in size from 4 feet to up to 30 feet; dolphins are among almost forty species in 17 genera.
Found worldwide, they prefer the shallower seas of the continental shelves.
As predatory carnivores, their diet consists of mostly fish and squid.
[But they will rape and take a nip out of a human, smothering swimmers, taking them down to the seafloor to drown and/or penetrate, as was recently witnessed in Japan in gang rapes of swimmers at the beach by juvenile pods. They can get awful "friendly" in Hawaii, too, and jealous once they bond to a human. Others better watch out, and that human better watch out. Oh, Flipper, so named because they can flip out.]
It's all about brain size, human scientists declared, until an animal with a larger brain-to-body-size ratio than humans was found. Still some humans argue that we are better because we invented cities, industrial pollution, war, and such things.
Interestingly, according to the great Douglas Adams, dolphins argue that they are smarter for exactly the same reason, that is, they didn't. But the blue bottlenoses aren't all angels.
How to hug a sea porcupine
They sometimes rape and murder (purposely kill) humans, drowning them during sexual assaults out of jealous rage or infuriated at their meddling when female divers are present. Ask divers and, if swimming with the dolphins in Hawaii, avoid the plucky teens with erections.
Dolphins make plans, hang out in gangs (pods), hunt, have feelings, communicate, do neat tricks, get depressed when enslaved, work for the military-industrial complex that exploits them for war.
Now, on today's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me! (10/7/23), we come to find they get high on purpose on a psychedelic substance available to them in the sea. How many psychedelics could there be in the sea, Flipper?
Endogenous auto-intoxication on puff?
This harkens back to the thesis that we, modern humans (Homo sapien sapiens, because we're sapient, the future Homo spiritus) evolved from some pre-human primate who discovered and ingested entheogens. There's a name for this theory. Joe Rogan may have mentioned it, something like the High Monkey Conjecture (aka Stoned Ape Theory).
Well, be that as it may, pass the puffer on the left fin side. Dolphins have been observed doing "puff," street name TTX (tetrodotoxin) and "Sashimi" (Japanese Fugu,because it will "fug u up" and may even result in death, Thai pakapao or "Pow" because it packs a punch).
Dolphins carefully prepare papakao (provoking the balloon fish to release more protective poison the way Voodoo practitioners and some Satanists torment a chicken or other living being, even humans, before butchering and ritually consuming its blood to get high on the adrenaline, adrenochrome, and/or other stress-induced compounds).
They deliberately ingest it, and pass it around among themselves in a social activity much like a psychedelic circle among the shamans of the Americas in the Hollywood movie Altered States with William Hurt.
This is shocking because it may have been the genesis of their larger brains, a global view of the oceans, and protective behavior for humans in danger at sea, and empathy (as when they warn us of danger or head it off on our behalf).
Life, Universe and Everything
Moreover, a recent episode of This American Life or a similar NPR program spoke frankly of a few cases of human bestiality with dolphins, one female trainer who got carried away with her hands on a regular basis in the interest of hastening her research and care, she claimed, and another man in the wild who just liked to play and make bi-curious dolphins feel good.
We are as gods (celestial devas) to them, and like the gods did to us, sometimes things get carried away. It's a strange world...and it only seems to be getting stranger. Well, time to call our Bonobo buddies and see what they're up to this weekend.
I may look cuddly, but I'm no toy. So don't play with me and my flesh and blood.
Is it the Doctrine of Signatures: Who would ever guess one could trip on this trippy creature?
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(John Downer Productions) Bottlenose dolphins are filmed apparently getting high on toxic secretions from pufferfish. The puffers secrete a neurotoxin that in high doses can kill but in small doses seemingly has a psychedelic narcotic effect.
Clip from Programme 2 of Dolphins: Spy in the Podon BBC 1. Narrated by David Tennant. Music by Will Gregory. Series directed by John Downer. For more information about the program, visit website:
http://jdp.co.uk/programmes/dolphins-...
Dolphins can sleep with half their brain and can therefore stay awake for at least two weeks (S.D. McCulloch/earthsky.org)
Dolphins (Jesslee Cuizon/earthsky.org)
India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests has decided to forbid the
keeping of captive dolphins for public entertainment anywhere in the
country.
In a policy statement released Friday, the ministry advised state
governments to reject any proposal to establish a dolphinarium “by
any person / persons, organizations, government agencies, private or
public enterprises that involves import, capture of cetacean species to
establish for commercial entertainment, private or public exhibition and
interaction purposes whatsoever.” Why?
Social dolphins (cutepictures.co)
“Whereas cetaceans in general are highly intelligent and
sensitive, and various scientists who have researched dolphin behavior
have suggested that the unusually high intelligence; as compared to
other animals means that dolphins should be seen as ‘non-human
persons’ and as such should have their own specific rights and is
morally unacceptable to keep them captive for entertainment purpose,” the ministry said....
[This] happened back in May and somehow escaped worldwide attention and
the 24-hour media hoopla. The effort to re-categorize cetaceans
(dolphins, whales, porpoises) as non-human persons has been gathering
steam since a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science in 2011, when a group of philosophers, conservationists, and
animal behaviorists attempted to gather wide support for a Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans from the scientific community.
BEIJING - Dolphins do not whistle as previously thought. Instead, they "talk" like humans, according to a new study.
Dolphins use their noses to produce a different kind of tonal sound, just like humans do when speaking [particularly evident in Tonal Asian languages like Thai and Chinese], said Peter Madsen, the lead author of the study published in Royal Society Biology Letters.
Madsen studied how dolphins communicate by digitizing recordings made in 1977 of a 12-year-old male dolphin, which was made to breathe a mixture of helium and oxygen called heliox.
Scientists said humans breathing in a heliox sound like Donald Duck. According to Livescience.com, the heliox was meant to mimic conditions during a deep dive since it causes a shift up in frequency. However, when breathing in heliox, the dolphin continued to make the same sounds with the same frequency. More
Enslaved, trained dolphin takes part in an aquatic football match to entertain tourists at the Hefei Aquarium in Hefei, capital of east China's Anhui Province in 2010 (Xinhua).
So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY) Dolphins have feelings. Dolphins rescue humans from sharks and shipwrecks. Dolphins prepare their meals. Dolphins name themselves.... It does not surprise us in the least. Is there anything these sea mammals do not do? But language is the exclusive domain of humans! So long as we believe only our brains can handle syntax, grammar, and linear retentive expression, just so long will we keep ourselves distinct from nature and its countless life forms. Animals already communicate. They already possess means of communicating exceeding ours. Extraterrestrial life forms, who gave us the languages we are so proud of as our exclusive evolutionary advantage, possess still higher and better forms of language. For instance, UFO vehicles communicate a tripartite language, and many animals can use symbols and signs. That dolphins use tones is hardly news to anyone who has interacted with these magical sea creatures.
Dolphins are amazing beyond belief. How many of us know that there are dolphins native to Nepal -- a landlocked Himalayan kingdom with no saltwater and no natural lakes, the reputed birthplace of the Buddha (Lumbini), where Buddha Boy now resides? Snow melt from Mt. Everest and other mountains creates rivers. And long ago it seems dolphins swam up (or were brought) and are now indigenous and endangered. But they continue to try to heal humans:
However they got up to the Himalayas, they're there. There's also a species in the Ganges River in neighboring India (and a Ganges shark). There is even a freshwater dolphin species in the Americas, in the greatest body of fresh water on Earth, the Amazon River.
This is a report on the healing power and compassion of the Brazilian pink river species. Sadly, natives in each of these countries either have fear-based superstitions or greed that provokes them to slaughter these mammals to the verge of extinction. This is in spite of the fact that one never hears of dolphins harming humans but only the contrary: Dolphins help humans, saving lives when we are drowning or lost or suffering illness (as in this video). They are like dogs to humankind, without having had their wild nature selected out. They are like "Man's best friend," Fido, the domesticated-wolf.
One of the 31 Planes of Existence in Buddhist cosmology is the Ani-mal Realm. This world is expansive and mindboggling, though often taken for granted as merely the mundane and visible world of cats, dogs, and maybe "edible cows."
It is, in fact, extremely diverse and difficult to fathom as this story about the smartest creature on the planet illustrates. (According to the Hitchhiker's Guide, humans are only the third smartest, based on independent observations, just behind lab mice). Even what is possible in our Human Plane is scarcely known to us (e.g., Uzbekistan discovers 128 year old woman).
CANBERRA, Australia (Reuters) – Dolphins are the chefs of the seas, having been seen going through precise and elaborate preparations to rid cuttlefish of ink and bone to produce a soft meal of calamari, Australian scientists say.
A wild female Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin was observed going through the same series of complicated steps to prepare cuttlefish prey for eating in the Spencer Gulf, in South Australia state.
"It's a sign of how well their brains are developed. It's a pretty clever way to get pure calamari without all the horrible bits," Mark Norman, the curator of mollusks at Museum Victoria and a research team member, told the Canberra Times newspaper.
The research team, writing in the science journal PLoS One, said they repeatedly observed a female dolphin herding cuttlefish out of algal weed and onto a clear, sandy patch of seafloor.
The dolphin, identified using circular body scars, then pinned the cuttlefish with its snout while standing on its head, before killing it instantly with a rapid downward thrust and "loud click" audible to divers as the hard cuttlebone broke. More>>
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