Who doesn’t love dolphins? Something about their social, often playful, nature seems to stir the heart and bring smiles all around.
Today, I’d like to share three very different videos of dolphins. Click on full screen to get a good view. The first video shows a woman riding a wake board when a large number of dolphins swim up and surround her.
“We’re going to make a YouTube sensation with this, I’m sure,” says the boat driver. The video has generated more than 5 million views since it was posted a little more than a year ago.
The second includes footage of dolphins blowing bubble rings, then slicing and dicing them in playful ways. Seeing them do this causes me to reflect not only on their intelligence but also their cultural development.
The third video is the story of a surfer who owes his life to dolphins after he is attacked by a great white shark.
I’d also like to share the words of Daniel McCulloch, a leading dolphin photographer who created a website called “Dolphin Synergy”:
“As we aspire to being the most `civilised’ or `evolved’ species on this planet, it is quite humbling to realise that not only has it been inhabited for 30-40 million years compared to our 1 million or so, by another truly sentient species, but that that species is extremely emotionally, mentally & socially developed.
“Rather than being plagued with wars, violent aggression, homicides, rapes, boredom, lonliness, apathy, anger and perpetual survival struggles and starvation of the majority of the species, the dolphins are living a life and social structure of profound joy and harmony, so much so that the ancient Greeks modeled their very advanced democracy on the dolphins’ social structure.”
Read more at McCulloch’s page, “Synchronicity: The Dance of the Dolphins.”
