paradox Posted September 26, 2008 hmm, my mother sent me this video & i thought i should post it cause it's pretty cool. dolphin rings dolphins have become such a poxy newage cliche, it's no good for the poor animals image, but damn they are such cool a creatures & this stuff is really amazing. so anyway here is what the email i was sent said: "The attached video is of dolphins playing with silver colored rings which they have the ability to make under water to play with. It isn't known how they learn this, or if they're born with the ability. As if by magic, the dolphin does a quick flip of its head and a silver ring appears in front of its beak. The ring is a solid, donut shaped bubble about 2-ft across, yet it doesn't rise to the surface of the water. It stands upright in the water like a magic doorway to an unseen dimension. The dolphin then pulls a small silver donut from the larger one. Looking at the twisting ring for one last time, a bite is taken from it, causing the small ring to collapse into thousands of tiny bubbles which head upward towards the water's surface. After a few moments the dolphin creates another ring to play with. There also seems to be a separate mechanism for producing small rings, which a dolphin can accomplish by a quick flip of its head. An explanation of how dolphins make these silver rings is that they are "air-core vortex rings". Invisible, spinning vortices in the water are generated from the tip of a dolphin's dorsal fin when it is moving rapidly and turning. When dolphins break the line, the ends are drawn together into a closed ring. The higher velocity fluid around the core of the vortex is at a lower pressure than the fluid circulating farther away. Air is injected into the rings via bubbles released from the dolphin's blowhole. The energy of the water vortex is enough to keep the bubbles from rising for a few seconds of play time." Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ace Posted September 26, 2008 Awesome vid Paradox! Such amazingly intelligent animals but I totally agree with the cliche newage stuff - my g/f hates dolphins because of that tacky image attributed to them (not their fault - just the way they have been portrayed). And I cant help but chuckle at this line, which seems to capture just a little of that cliche tackiness: It stands upright in the water like a magic doorway to an unseen dimension. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
incognito Posted September 26, 2008 (edited) amazing. i dont doubt it for a second. ive also read about the 'dark side' of dolphins, where packs of juvenile males will roam around looking for a female and pack rape her. check this out lol http://forfackssake.blogspot.com/2006/01/a...g-dolphins.html Edited September 26, 2008 by incognito Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ThunderIdeal Posted September 30, 2008 ummmm stupid explanations aside, how are they doing that? the mind boggles . eyes wide open in shock smiley. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ace Posted September 30, 2008 Without watching the vid again, I thought they were either splashing some bubbles from the surface of the water and carrying them down a little deeper before using gentle currents created by their movements to create the rings and then just playing with them (obviously a simplistic look at the process). Otherwise I think the bubbles start from their blow holes as I think was described in the OP. I wonder if we could make bubble rings from our own 'blow holes'? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ayjay101 Posted October 1, 2008 hmm, my mother sent me this video & i thought i should post it cause it's pretty cool. lol, looks like this email has been doing the rounds - my mother sent me the exact same email around the same time as your post! ...always suspected I had a long lost sibling Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gromit Posted October 1, 2008 (edited) check this out lolhttp://forfackssake.blogspot.com/2006/01/a...g-dolphins.html haha nice link jono adoplh-ins :D lets not forget the US military train these fuckers - and some of them escaped! Militarised Adolphins Edited October 1, 2008 by --{ MAYJA }-- Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AndyAmine. Posted October 1, 2008 A person can blow 'smoke/bubble rings' underwater apparently although I have never tried it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
GingaNinja Posted October 1, 2008 creating a ring of air with ya mouth is reasonably easy underwater, but no idea how they can push it around like they do. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
devance Posted October 4, 2008 'creating a ring of air with ya mouth is reasonably easy underwater, but no idea how they can push it around like they do' ---------------------------------------------------------- Interesting question. Ultrasound might be how the porps do it. Might be a soliton wave and ultrasound as more complex. [solitons are nonlinear waves. As a preliminary definition, a soliton is considered as solitary, traveling wave pulse solution of nonlinear partial differential equation (PDE). The nonlinearity will play a significant role. For most dispersive evolution equations these solitary waves would scatter inelastically and lose 'energy' due to the radiation. Not so for the solitons: after a fully nonlinear interaction, the solitary waves remerge, retaining their identities with same speed and shape. It should have remarkable stability properties. Stability plays a important role in soliton physics.] ------------------------------ Counterintuitive but thats what physics has in surprises and in quantum physics. -------------------------------------------------------- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soliton http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/physik/KSND/abb/node6.html http://www.physorg.com/news65711987.html http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~davia/mbc/8start.html Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
