This afternoon I was hardly in the water or Dusty presented me with one bottle with a string on it. According to my own sermon I twisted the cap off and left it to sink (see discussion on the Facebook page of 'Dusty the dolphin' (with spaces, the other one without spaces is a commercial tourist-oriented enterprise) at the photograph by Virginia Turbett).
But in seconds she was back, towing the bottle by holding the string between her lips. I never saw her holding anything in her beak before. And it wasn't between her teeth, but very precisely, with an air of prudence, between the tips of her lips. She swam alongside, curved me in and let the bottle go. I let it and swam on. As it was very murky at the pier I began to swim out to the drop. But Dusty kept offering me the bottle and when it sank she juggled it forward like a true bottlenose dolphin. I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. Clearly she had singled me out for a playmate. But there was also something challenging there. As if she dared me to go down and retrieve it.
I figured, this is not really a game I want to play, but you make it very obvious you want to. And she put it straight on my track to the drop, planting it right before me.
I figured again, this was entirely different from the two-bottle game. Now the string could not hurt her as there was no counterforce.
All right then! I threw the bottle to the side, but in seconds found it on my path again. Several times I saw her underneath me and next bumped my head against the bottle. Suddenly I realised that the bottle was floating. How could that be? I figured some water must have poured out when I threw it and some air got caught inside the bottle which had turned upside down. Still the shock of the bottle landing on the water must have drowned it out. Could she have done this herself? And if so, how?
I thought of the words of Ken Martin, that dolphins could be professors of Fluid mechanics and are complete aces and acrobats with water and air (Dolphin Address 3 2012, http://youtu.be/71frCS5mOJU)
The answer may be in the single time I found the bottle on the seabed with a firm dent in it. Is that how she did it? Squeeze some water out of it with her beak and use the property of the bottle to regain its original shape, sucking air into it? Could she be that clever? If so she's kept her secret from visual confirmation.
And so another tale of mystery is added to her behaviour. Maybe, in her enthousiasm, she bit one time to firm. Bottles don't dent by themselves just by floating in the water. She may even have done this right before our eyes, but we simply didn't know what to look for. There is no end to this dolphin's ingenuity.
Later, back at the pier, she suddenly was far less generous in letting the bottle go. Several times she nearly pushed it into my hand, but held on to the string. Only when I let go of the bottle she would let the string go. There was like a lesson in that: 'This is my bottle and you only get to play with it on my say so.'
Wait a minute, I was playing with you, I thought, but now you're telling me you are playing with me. Indeed there are plenty of candidates. I did not let you bring back the bottle to me, you let me throw it.
We, humans, we are so full of ourselves, thinking we can figure you out. We tell ourselves we are aware of only being guests on your turf, but still think we're calling the shots. So from time to time you, very gently, feed us humble pie. It's not easy to realise and even harder to admit that we are the Puppet on a string.