Caught on camera: Dolphins play football with a JELLYFISH
Dolphins have been filmed playing an impromptu game of football... using a jellyfish as an improvised ball.
A team of marine biologists were astonished to see a dolphin swim under a jellyfish and with a quick flick of its tail shoot it out of the water.
The bottlenose dolphins were caught on video performing the strange activity off the Welsh coastline. One dolphin was able to flip the jellyfish six feet up in the air.
Scientists believe their game of flipball goes back hundreds of thousands of years. But it may go some way to explaining why dolphins in captivity are so skilful with balls at sealife parks around the world.
Marine experts Jonathan Easter, 23, who saw the dolphins at play, said: 'One thing is for sure, they were having fun. There were floating blobs of jelly and the dolphins were flipping them about.
'They swim under the jellyfish, then at the right moment flick their tail up to give it a good kick.
'They were not always accurate but when they had a direct hit the jellyfish were literally kicked out of the water.
'We have been studying individual dolphins in Welsh waters for some time but we got more than we expected from this trip.
These incredible images provide a privileged insight into the lives and behaviour of bottlenose dolphins.
'But this behaviour has never been seen before and it presents more questions than answers!'
But there is a sting in the tail - some of the Barrel jellyfish sadly died from being flipped.
The marine biologists were from the Countryside Council for Wales, Sea Watch Foundation and Marine Awareness North Wales.
They were studying Britain's largest coastal population of bottlenose dolphins, which live in Cardigan Bay during the summer to breed and feed.
Although killing jellyfish can be sad, but they have no brains... Their existence is effectively pointless. This doesn't make the dolphins any less of assholes, but I can't help but wonder do the jellyfish even know if they are alive? They just seem to be blobs of mass with no purpose besides procreation and maintaining the survival of the species.
What makes dolphins real assholes is how they gangrape porpoises for fun. They just go out in groups and kill them for no reason.
It's stuff like this that makes me really hope there's no other sapients floating around in the universe. Really really hope. I don't want to have to deal with something smarter than me when all the evidence suggests that smarter on the whole equals meaner.
EPT
expected something else.. not gonna lie. But this wasn't bad.
