Men usually prepare flowers and jewelry to impress females. But do other animals also use some objects to attract females? The answer is YES! Scientists from Britain and Brazil found that male dolphins use bunches of weeds to woo females!
Dr. Tony Martin of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge and Dr. Vera da Silva from the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Brazil studied 6,026 groups of dolphins in a flooded rainforest reserve in Brazil three years ago.
While studying their behavior, the researchers found that male dolphins carried pieces of plants and twigs to impress females. “Many scientists previously believed that the object-carrying was simply playful behavior. If it was merely playfulness, females and juveniles would have been expected to carry objects too,” they said. “However, they did not. Only males carried objects.”
Carrying objects to woo females is rare in the animal kingdom - only humans and chimpanzees haven been believed to carry out such behavior. The findings may provide proof for the existence of dolphin culture. Until recently, culture was seen as a unique human characteristic not shared by other species.
“Many of my colleagues were skeptical when I first suggested the idea of dolphins’ cultural behavior, but I found overwhelming evidence,” said Dr. Martin. Now many scientists in the world believe that dolphins have culture and the object-carrying is socially learned.
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