Wild dolphins tail-walk on water

Tuesday, 19 August 2008

By Richard Black for the BBC

A wild dolphin is apparently teaching other members of her group to walk on their tails, a behaviour usually seen only after training in captivity. The tail-walking group lives along the south Australian coast near Adelaide. One of them spent a short time after illness in a dolphinarium 20 years ago and may have picked up the trick there.

Scientists studying the group say tail-walk tuition has not been seen before, and suggest the habit may emerge as a form of "culture" among this group. "We can't for the life of us work out why they do it," said Mike Bossley from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), one of the scientists who have been monitoring the group on the Port River estuary. "We're doing systematic observations now to determine if there's something that may trigger it, but so far we haven't found anything," he told BBC News.

In the 1980s, Billie, one of the females in the group, spent a few weeks in a local dolphinarium recovering from malnutrition and sickness, a consequence of having been trapped in a marina lock. She received no training there, but may have seen others tail-walking. Now, other females in the group have picked up the habit. It is seen rarely in the wild, and the obvious inference is that they have learned it from Billie. "This indicates that they do learn from each other, which is not a surprise really, but it does also seem that they exhibit elements of what in humans we would call 'cultural' behaviour," said Dr Bossley.

"These are things that groups develop and are passed between individuals and that come to define those groups, such as language or dancing; and it would seem that among the Port River dolphins we may have an incipient tail-walking culture." The "cultural" transmission of ideas and skills has been documented in apes, while dolphins off the coast of Western Australia are known to teach their young to use sponges as an aid when gathering food.

[I love stories like this. It helps to pop the bubble around us that makes us feel so much superior to other animals and supposedly so unique that we have to be ‘special’ or ‘different’ or some such nonsense. We ignore the fact that other animals appear to have cultural traits or distinct languages or reasoning powers because not only does it diminish our ‘special’ relationship with the rest of nature but it also calls into question how we treat our fellow creatures. It appears to be in the interests of no one to elevate the standing of any other creature to anything approaching our own. Just imagine the levels of our well deserved guilt for all of the horrible things we continue to do to them.

Anyway, this story made me smile all day and still brings a smile to my face now. Nature still has the capacity to surprise me, entertain me and enlighten me. Long may it continue.]

Pulp Fiction.

Cartoon Time.

Technophilia.

Just Finished Reading: Plato – A Very Short Introduction by Julia Annas

At a mere 91 pages this was a very short introduction indeed. Saying that, it also turned out to be a very interesting. I’ve read bits and pieces by Professor Annas before. She writes very well indeed in a style that is both accessible and illuminating. So far in my wider reading I’ve only really dipped into the works of Plato (actually reading more about him than by him) so it was good the come across another slant of his rather large body of work. I had assumed that, despite speaking through the mouths of others in his collected books, he was actually putting across a coherent if evolving philosophy of life. Not so apparently! I had also assumed that Plato’s Forms where central to his work – again not so apparently. Having that viewpoint now in my mind was alone worth reading this book for. Now its for me to decide if I agree with the author – once I’ve read enough Plato to form an opinion on the subject.

I have certainly developed a fondness for the Ancient philosophers of both Greece and Rome over the last year. Not only do many of them seem strangely modern but they also seem to be saying many of the right things that we need to relearn in the modern world. Despite the gap of thousands of years I believe that these ancient scholars can still speak directly to the minds of people today and I think that we would be wise to listen to them.

Cartoon Time.

Lord Carey backs call for an end to the blasphemy law

From Ekklesia

25 Nov 2007

Replying to questions on a BBC TV programme today, Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has publicly agreed with the Christian think-tank Ekklesia that it is time for Britain's archaic blasphemy law to be abolished. Lord Carey, who is an outspoken conservative evangelical within the Church of England, was responding to comments by Ekklesia co-director Jonathan Bartley on a discussion about blasphemy on BBC1's Sunday morning current affairs and religion programme, 'The Big Questions'.

The ex-Archbishop protested against what he said was an increase in "offensive" material about Christianity in the public domain, including 'Jerry Springer - The Opera', over which Stephen Green of Christian Voice is trying to arraign the BBC in a private prosecution. But Lord Carey said that Christ told his followers to put away their swords and did not seek to defend faith by force. Bartley said that a blasphemy law was itself blasphemous from a theological viewpoint, because it suggested that the transcendent God somehow needed human laws for protection.

Ekklesia has also pointed out that Christ faced an accusation of blasphemy at the trial that led to his death, and a Christian dramatist on the show said that many of Jesus' stories and comments caused great offence in his day. Blasphemy as a legal offence was backed by Tory MP Anne Widdecombe, a convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism, "so long as there is an Established Church in this country". Other supporters of blasphemy couched it in terms of a Christendom (church-state alliance) or theocratic approach. Ekklesia has argued that such views undermine a gospel of radical equality and humility rooted in the life of Christ.

Author and scientist Richard Dawkins, a campaigning atheist, said that free speech was indivisible, and that charges of blasphemy leading to a fatwa for Salman Rushdie was obscene and had affected his life deeply. Doctor Who and Torchwood star John Barrowman, who was offered a part in the Jerry Springer musical, also backed free speech on religion, and called for acceptance of gay people by the churches. Author Mark Vernon, an Anglican turned agnostic whose latest book is 'After Atheism', talked on the TV show about the bizarre and traumatic experience of being investigated by the police for blasphemy over a controversial poem some years ago.

[The whole idea of a blasphemy law seems totally bizarre to me. If we have free speech in this country we should be able to say things that might offend some people. If God exists He certainly doesn’t need human laws to defend Him. It’s about time that we ditched this archaic and frankly farcical idea.]

Even Cowgirls get the Blues.