Just When You Thought it Was Safe to Swim with the Dolphins…

Dolphins have done a pretty good job in cultivating a rep for being cute, cuddly, shipwreck-survivor-saving sea mammals. It turns out they’re not all they appear to be. Turns out, they’re cold blooded killers.

The Telegraph has it:

New evidence has been compiled by marine scientists that prove the normally placid dolphin is capable of brutal attacks both on innocent fellow marine mammals and, more disturbingly, on its own kind.

Film taken of gangs of dolphins repeatedly ramming baby porpoises, tossing them in the air and pursuing them to the death has solved a long-term mystery of what causes the death of so many of these harmless mammals - but has left animal experts baffled as to the motive.

Another mystery is that the animal ‘murders’ have only been reported in two parts of the world - along Scotland’s East Coast and in America off the beaches of Virginia, where even more alarmingly, the victims were scores of the dolphins’ own young.

Life in nature can be a real bitch sometimes.

Link [Telegraph UK]