Posted on January 2, 2009, 3:20 pm, by Sarah, under
conservation.
Hundreds of ocean predators take advantage of a natural tendency of swarms to coalesce and to behave as a large synchronized group despite a lack of higher ordered thought or direction. Steven Strogatz gave a beautiful presentation about this natural patterning in fireflies, swallows, and so many schools of fish, particularly as they evade predators. [...]
Posted on December 11, 2008, 12:19 pm, by Sarah, under
marine mammals.
Wild bottlenose dolphins, given their widespread distribution across several ocean systems, display a wide variety of peculiar behaviors including carrying objects. The question has remained, are these objects play things or is this carrying behavior an adaptive one that helps bottlenose survive?
For a subset of the bottlenose population in Shark Bay, Australia, sponge-carrying (or sponger) [...]
While the JKL pods get lots of attention off the Pacific coastline we often forget that killer whales can be found in a variety of other US waters including the Gulf of California and the Gulf of Mexico. A recent deep sea fishing charter had the fantastic luck to come [...]