Cool video

[ksmith]

Someone took their robotic/animatronic baby dinosaur to Sea World, and set it in front of the dolphin tank. The dolphins spot it about 1:46 in.

It's sweet. But as John Aravosis said in his AmericaBlog post about the dolphins: "These guys are starting to freak me out."

Comments

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Wow.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

*squeak squeak chirp click squeak chirp chirp squeeeak trill click*

(Translation: "I for one welcome our new animatronic dinosaur overlords.")

Think about it. You're a dolphin. You have some degree of intelligence greater than the average dog or cat, possibly much greater. You spend your day in a tank, playing with your friends, eating fish, and being gawked at by strange four-limbed, bipedal land-walking creatures all day. These strange creatures invariably do the same things: tap on the glass, contort their faces, wiggle their limbs. Sometimes they lift each other up to the glass.

But what they never do is anything that hurts you, nor do they feed you. In fact, they pretty much don't impinge on your life at all, so you ignore them all. They are just part of the scenery.

And then one day, a very strange creature turns up. It also has four limbs, but also a long neck, and it isn't bipedal. It's also much smaller than the other creatures, and a funny color. It's probably an entirely different sort of critter altogether. So...what is it going to do? It's probably too small to try to eat you, but maybe it's edible. Go check it out.

Hmmm. Can't touch it. Stupid window. Well, let's hang out for a while and see what it does. You call your friends over, too, because you've never seen anything like this, and they might want to check it out.

So...how long do you observe it before you decide it's not dangerous or edible? Several minutes, I would expect.

I would be interested to see how the dolphins react to, say, a cat pawing at the glass.

I would also hypothesize that perhaps the gears and machinery in the dino made noises that sounded like potential communication to the dolphins. The whirring might translate as "Hey, come here, I have fish."

(Yeah, I take all the magic out of things. Sorry.)

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Did you visit the dinosaur website? The things apparently make "dinosaur" noises, not gear noises.

What you described isn't all that different from what happened. They gathered. They checked things out. One seemed to be mimicking the dino's movements.

(Yeah, I take all the magic out of things. Sorry.)

Not really.

[lagilman]

I have to admit, my first thought was "awww, cute." Then my second thought was "they're trying to decide if it's edible."

Dolphins are both wonderful and scary creatures. It would not surprise me at all to one day discover they're 'just' cats in wetsuits.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, my first thought was "awww, cute." Then my second thought was "they're trying to decide if it's edible.

John Aravosis wondered the same thing. His quote,: "However cute this appears, I can't helping thinking the dolphins were actually pulling a Homer, "mmmmm.... pleoooooo."

And one of the commenters said that keeping highly intelligent animals like dolphins in captivity bothered them, and that perhaps the animals were simply bored.

[phantomminuet.livejournal.com]

It is just a little bit freaky.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Aren't the Sea World dolphins the same ones that figured out how to make bubble rings and taught each other how to play? I'd cast my vote for highly bored, and looking for distractions.