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Re: Dolphins Communicate with "Fountains of Pee"

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Ubiquitous wrote:
> Humans typically consider peeing a private act. But for many animals, it's a
> crucial way to share information--one that goes way beyond simply marking
> territory. Scientists are increasingly aware of urine communication in all
> its startling forms.
> 
> "Animals in general want to learn as much as they can about other animals,
> such as their sex, dominance, species, and so on," says Thomas Breithaupt, a
> sensory ecologist at the University of Hull in England, "and a lot of
> information is in the urine."
> 
> Recently researchers documented Amazon River dolphins (Inia geoffrensis)
> performing a curious behavior: aerial urination. A male turns on its back at
> the water's surface and ejects a stream of pee into the air--and almost 70
> percent of the time, the team reported in Behavioural Processes, a nearby
> male "receiver" approaches this spontaneous fountain.
> 
> The researchers speculate that male dolphins might use aerial peeing to
> deliberately communicate their "social position or physical condition," says
> study co-author Claryana Araújo-Wang, a biologist at Botos do Cerrado
> Research Project in Brazil. Further experiments are needed to pin down
> precisely what's happening, says Joachim Frommen, a behavioral ecologist at
> Manchester Metropolitan University in England, who was not involved in the
> study.
> 
> But this is just the latest in a long and varied list of the stories that
> urine can tell. In primates, it can provide clues about an individual's
> species, gender and group membership "and could support both individual
> recognition and the finding of mating partners," says Marlen Kücklich, a
> behavioral ecologist at Leipzig University in Germany. Some primates even
> wash themselves with their own pee. This behavior is not fully understood,
> but the authors of a study on capuchin monkeys proposed that males might
> attract females via urine's testosterone content.
> 
> In aquatic environments, some fish use urine to communicate their size and
> aggressiveness before fights. For a few crustaceans, such as lobsters--which
> pee from their heads--urine can also convey information about social status
> and readiness to mate. Female stickleback fish get information on a male's
> immune system by sniffing its urine, and they tend to choose males with
> "immune systems that are very comparable to or compatible with their own,"
> Frommen says.
> 
> "When it comes to communication, humans always focus on visual cues and
> acoustic cues because we are visual animals and acoustic animals," Frommen
> adds. But smell is a crucial sense, too, though understudied in some species,
> and urine is a major provider of olfactory information. In recent years, he
> says, "people became more aware that we are focusing on a very limited area
> of communication, and more and more studies started thinking about smell."
> 
> --
> Not a joke! Don't jump!
> 

This is probably just little children playing with their excreta.  Only 
bottlenose dolphins display the full intelligence capacity of the dolphin.

-- 
Hasbro

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Dolphins Communicate with "Fountains of Pee" Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> - 2025-05-15 15:41 -0400
  Re: Dolphins Communicate with "Fountains of Pee" Mandraphilia <horchata12839@gmail.com> - 2025-07-09 13:49 -0500
    Re: Dolphins Communicate with "Fountains of Pee" Ṃᴆ <mAdMaX@pNeUmAtIcFlAtRiVeTjAcKhAmMeR.cOm> - 2025-07-26 15:42 -0500

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