In line with Amazonian folklore, the world’s male river dolphins are shapeshifters (encantade), reworking at night time into good-looking younger males who seduce and impregnate human girls. The legend’s origins could lie in the truth that dolphins have reasonably human-like genitalia. A bunch of Canadian biologists did not spot any suspicious shapeshifting conduct over the 4 years they spent monitoring a dolphin inhabitants in central Brazil, however they did doc 36 instances of one other human-like conduct: what seems to be some form of cetacean pissing contest.
Particularly, the male dolphins rolled over onto their backs, displayed their male members, and launched a stream of urine as excessive as 3 ft into the air. This normally occurred when different males had been round, who appeared fascinated in flip by the arching streams of pee, even chasing after them with their snouts. It is presumably a type of chemical sensory communication and never merely a necessity to alleviate themselves, based on the biologists, who described their findings in a paper revealed within the journal Behavioral Processes. As co-author Claryana Araújo-Wang of CetAsia Analysis Group in Ontario, Canada, instructed New Scientist, “We had been actually shocked, because it was one thing we had by no means seen earlier than.”
Spraying urine is a standard conduct in lots of animal species, used to mark territory, defend towards predators, talk with different members of 1’s species, or as a way of mate choice because it has been urged that the chemical compounds within the urine carry helpful details about bodily well being or social dominance.
