Nature is metal, as they say. Animals eating animals can be a hard thing to stomach, but everything’s got to eat, and the cruel reality of the world is that some animals require the flesh of other animals to survive. We’re a little sheltered from it — unless you happen to be a hunter and are aware of the fact that a pink slab of meat was once a chunk of a living, breathing animal — so actually seeing what it requires for a meat-eater to eat isn’t always for the faint of heart. But it’s also very, very interesting, especially when the predator and prey are both hyper intelligent creatures. Like, for example, a dolphin and an octopus.
In the video you see above, courtesy of the BBC, dolphins use stingrays in an ingenious way to hunt for octopus. Octopus, while delicious, were just added to a list of sentient creatures. The study was one of those studies that didn’t need to be studied… anyone watching is likely aware that octopuses (no, not octopi) definitely don’t want to be killed and eaten, but hey, it’s nice to have cold, hard facts proving it.
In the video, researchers find a pair of dolphins (lovingly named Zit and Pimple) using a stingray (RIP, Steve) to hide from an octopus meal. See, stingrays can use the electroreceptors on the underside of their bodies to locate prey that might be hidden under things like seagrass. Dolphins, of course, cannot do that, but they appear to have learned that stingrays can find hidden meals. And then, since nature is metal, they steal it.
