Hubble bubble
This is fascinating to me on multiple levels:
Yes, yes, it’s just dolphins playing with bubbles – so far, so hippy-dippy. But it’s the capacity for play in animals that interests me. The dolphins are creating these purely for fun, for the sheer hell of spinning them around, nosing off ever-smaller rings of air to swim through. There’s no useful purpose to them here except entertainment. It’s a very human-like trait to exhibit, although that’s a terrifically arrogant statement – we could just as well say that humans exhibit dolphin-like or ape-like traits.
On top of that, the other thing that grabs my attention is the actual bubbles being created – shimmering hoops that manage to retain their shape even when split apart. A bubble should be round or something close to it, goddammit, not this bizarre toroidal shape! A bit of research showed that quite a few species of dolphin and whale make these – something I never knew until now. And, were I inclined to take up swimming seriously, I’d be able to create similar, but less impressive rings. Although given that I swim like a particularly suicidal brick, any feelings of achievement I might obtain by successfully doing that would be somewhat tempered by my impending watery death.
Of course, being the ever-reliable internet, the same research turned up the usual nutters who seem to think that this is tied in to extra-terrestrial activity. Love the ‘computer-enhanced’ images on that page – nice of them to let us know the huge and obviously fake white blobs that have been painted in might not actually be real.
I don’t know why some people can’t accept that the natural world can be fascinating and amazing enough in itself without having to ascribe it to some nebulous alien or spiritual force. I imagine it’s the ongoing influence of creationism, simply reinterpreted into another form. And that’s a dangerous force when it prevents people from thinking about things critically. Luckily though, I happen to know for a fact that dolphins have other beliefs entirely.