Mud-ring feeding

The bottlenose dolphin is one of the most adaptive cetaceans. Numerous studies of its behaviour highlighted various and different feeding strategies to have a food-full belly.

Thes dolphins are able to surface-feed, patrol fish-farms looking for wild fishes around the cages, take advantage of various fishing gear, ‘crater-feed’, ‘beach-feed’, use sponges to ferret prey from the sea floor, and prepare their meal by removing the ink and the calcareous bone from cuttlefish.

The ultimate hunting trick is ‘mud-ring feeding’.

By beating the tail down hard and swimming in tight circles, they create a wall of mud around shoaling fish. Inside of these rings, scared fishes try to escape by jumping out of the water but... they end directly into a dolphin's mouth!

This strategy has been caught by video and showed in the first episode (Challenges of Life) of the new BBC series Life.

Silvia Bonizzoni