Dolphin

Individual species may employ a number of methods of hunting:. For details of extinct varieties of football invented and/or played during the Middle Ages in Europe, see the medieval football article.. There are no known reports of cannibalism amongst dolphins. The different codes are listed below and are described more fully in their own articles. The larger species, especially the orca, are capable of eating marine mammals, even large whales. In other countries or regions within them, the word "football" may refer to American football, Australian rules football, Canadian football, Gaelic football, or one of the two codes of rugby football: rugby league or rugby union. Usually, the prey is swallowed whole. However, even in the countries where football is the official name of association football, this name may be at odds with common usage.

Some dolphins may take crustaceans. Of the 48 national FIFA affiliates in which English is an official or primary language, only five — Canada, the Marshall Islands, New Zealand, Samoa and the United States — use soccer in their name, while the rest use football. The dentition is adapted to the animals they hunt: Species with long beaks and many teeth forage on fish, whereas short beaks and lesser tooth count are linked to catching squid. In most English-speaking countries, the word "football" usually refers to Association football, also known as soccer (soccer originally being a slang abbreviation of Association). Dolphins are predators, chasing their prey at high speed. Because of this, much friendly controversy has occurred over the term football, primarily because it is used in different ways in different parts of the English-speaking world. Since dolphins spend most of their time below the surface in the wild, just tasting the water could act as a sense of smell. The word "football", when used in reference to a specific game can mean any one of those described above.

However, they seem to lack a well-developed sense of smell, but they most likely can taste and do show preferences for certain kinds of fish. This situation endured until 1948, when at the instigation of the French league, the Rugby League International Federation (RLIF) was formed at a meeting in Bordeaux. The dolphin's sense of touch is also well-developed. However the rules of professional rugby varied from one country to another, and negotiations between various national bodies were required to fix the exact rules for each international match. Hearing is also used for echolocation which seems to be an ability all dolphins have. In 1907, a New Zealand professional rugby team toured Australia and Britain, and as a result the New South Wales Rugby League was formed. Though they have a small ear opening on each side of their head it is believed hearing underwater is also if not exclusively done with the lower jaw which conducts the vibrations to the middle ear via a fat filled cavity in the lower jaw bone. Rugby league rules diverged significantly from rugby union in 1906, with the reduction of the team from 15 to 13 players, and the introduction of the play the ball (heeling the ball back after a tackle).

Most dolphins have acute eyesight both in and out of the water and their sense of hearing is far above our own. However, the number of deaths and injuries did gradually decline. Compare also: whale behavior. The changes did not immediately have the desired effect, and 33 American football players were killed during 1908 alone. She most likely died of self induced asphyxiation in the presence of her trainer Richard O'Barry.[1]. The report of the meetings introduced many restrictions on tackling and two more divergences from rugby: the banning of mass formation plays, as well as the forward pass. Probably one of the best known cases of dolphin suicide is that of a dolphin named Cathy, one of the bottlenose dolphins that performed in the television series Flipper. However, Harvard University had just built a concrete stadium, objected and proposed instead legalisation of the forward pass.

They either do so by repeatedly slamming their head against the pool walls or other solid objects or simply by not coming up for air anymore. One proposed change was a widening of the playing field. In captivity, many dolphins seem to have committed suicide. The meetings are now considered to be the origin of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The technology to use sponges as mouth protection is not genetically inherited but a taught cultural behaviour. This occurred reputedly at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt, who was considered to be a fancier of the game, but who had threatened to ban it, unless the rules were modified to reduce the numbers of deaths and disabilities. Other than with primate simians, the knowledge to use a tool is mostly handed over only from mothers to daughters. Consequently, a series of meetings was held by 19 colleges in 1905-06.

The animals break off sponges and put them onto their mouths thus protecting the delicate body part during their hunt for fish on the seabed. By the early 20th century in the USA, this had resulted in national controversy and American football was banned by a number of colleges. In May 2005, researchers in Australia discovered a cultural aspect of dolphin behaviour: Some dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) teach their offspring to use a tool. Both forms of rugby and American football were noted at the time for serious injuries, as well as the deaths of a significant number of players. Such military dolphins, however, drew scrutiny during the Vietnam War when rumors circulated that dolphins were being trained to kill Vietnamese Skin Divers. Eventually, to differentiate the two codes of rugby, the code played by clubs which remained members of national federations affiliated to the IRFB became known as Rugby Union. The military has employed dolphins for various purposes from finding mines to rescuing lost or trapped persons. The separate Lancashire and Yorkshire competitions of the NRFU merged in 1901, forming the Northern Rugby League, the first time the name Rugby League was used officially.

Dolphin/Human interaction is also employed in a curative sense at places where dolphins work with autistic or otherwise disabled children. Within a few years the NRFU rules had started to diverge from the RFU, most notably with the abolition of the line out. Dolphins trained to perform in front of an audience have become a favorite attraction in dolphinaria, for example SeaWorld. In 1895 representatives of the northern clubs met in Huddersfield to form the Northern Rugby Football Union (NRFU), a professional competition. Because of their high capacity for learning, dolphins have been employed by humans for any number of purposes. In Britain, by the 1890s, a long-standing Rugby Football Union ban on professional players was causing regional tensions within rugby football, as many players in northern England were working class and could not afford to take time off to train, travel, play and recover from injuries. This leads to them staying with injured or ill fellows for support. Professionalism was beginning to creep into the various codes of football.

However, the animals can establish strong bonds between each other. The International Rugby Football Board (IRFB) was founded in 1886, but rifts were beginning to emerge in the code. Membership in schools is not rigid; interchange is common. The prime example of this differentiation was the lack of an offside rule (an attribute which, for many years, was shared only by other Irish games like hurling, and by Australian rules football). They also use ultrasonic sounds for echolocation. Davan's rules showed the influence of games such as hurling and a desire to formalise an Irish code of football distinct from Rugby and Association football. The individuals communicate using a variety of clicks, whistles and other vocalizations. The first Gaelic football rules were drawn up by Maurice Davan and published in the United Ireland magazine on February 7, 1887.

In places with a high abundance of food, schools can join temporarily, forming an aggregation called a superpod; such groupings may exceed 1000 dolphins. The GAA sought to promote traditional Irish sports, such as hurling and to reject "foreign" (particularly English) imports. Dolphins are social animals, living in pods (also called "schools") of up to a dozen animals. There was no serious attempt to unify and codify Irish varieties of football, until the establishment of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in 1884. There are many stories of dolphins protecting shipwrecked sailors against sharks by swimming circles around the swimmers. Caid had begun to give way to a "rough-and-tumble game" which even allowed tripping. In return, in some cultures like in Ancient Greece they were treated with welcome; a ship spotting dolphins riding in their wake was considered a good omen for a smooth voyage. The rules of the English FA were being distributed widely.

They are also famous for their willingness to occasionally approach humans and playfully interact with them in the water. Trinity College, Dublin was an early stronghold of Rugby (see the Developments in the 1850s section, above). Frequently dolphins will accompany boats, riding the bow waves. By the 1870s, Rugby and Association football had started to become popular in Ireland. They have even been seen harassing other creatures, like seabirds and turtles. "Wrestling", "holding" opposing players, and carrying the ball were all allowed. Play is a very important part of dolphins' lives and they can often be observed playing with seaweed or playfighting with other dolphins. Ferris, described two main forms of caid during this period: the "field game" in which the object was to put the ball through arch-like goals, formed from the boughs of two trees, and; the epic "cross-country game" which took up most of the daylight hours of a Sunday on which it was played, and was won by one team taking the ball across a parish boundary.

Perhaps they just do it for fun. One observer, Father W. They could also be communicating to other dolphins to join a hunt, or attempting to dislodge parasites. Main article: History of Gaelic football. In the mid-19th century, various traditional football games, referred to collectively as caid, remained popular in Ireland, especially in County Kerry. Scientists aren't quite certain about the purpose of this behavior, but it may be to locate schools of fish by looking at above water signs, like feeding birds. (The Canadian Rugby Union was not formed until 1965.) American football was also frequently described as "rugby" in the 1880s. the spinner dolphin). For example, the Canadian Rugby Football Union, founded in 1884 was the forerunner of the Canadian Football League, rather than a Rugby Union body.

Dolphins often leap above the water surface, sometimes performing acrobatic figures (e.g. One of these was that Canadian football, for many years, did not officially distinguish itself from rugby. See the Dolphin intelligence article for more details. Over the years Canadian football absorbed some developments in American football, but also retained many unique characteristics. Straightforward comparisons of species' relative intelligence are complicated by differences in sensory apparatus, response modes, and nature of cognition; furthermore, the difficulty and expense of doing experimental work with a large marine animal mean that even such tests as can meaningfully be done have still not been done, or have been carried out with inadequate sample size and methodology. successful tackles). However, experts in comparative psychology or animal cognition would be reluctant to make any such estimate, as quantitative comparisons of intelligence between species are notoriously difficult to make in principle. These were complemented in 1882 by another of Camp's innovations: a team had to surrender possession if they did not gain five yards after three downs (i.e.

A typical statement would be that dolphins are roughly as intelligent as a two-year-old human. In 1880, Yale coach Walter Camp, devised a number of major changes to the American game, beginning with the reduction of teams from 15 to 11 players, followed by reduction of the field area by almost half, and; the introduction of the scrimmage, in which a player heeled the ball backwards, to begin a game. Dolphins are widely believed to be amongst the most intelligent of all animals. US colleges did not generally return to soccer until the early twentieth century. See individual species articles for details. Princeton, Rutgers and others continued to compete using soccer-based rules for a few years before switching to the rugby-based rules of Harvard and its competitors. It is often combined with lines and patches of different hue and contrast. The convention decided that, in the US game, four touchdowns would be worth one goal; in the event of a tied score, a goal converted from a touchdown would take precedence over four touch-downs.

The basic coloration patterns are shades of gray with a light underside and a distinct dark cape on the back. However, a touch-down (as it was also known in rugby football at the time) only counted toward the score if neither side kicked a field goal. The dolphin brain is large and has a highly structured cortex, which often is referred to in discussions about their high intelligence. In 1876, at the Massasoit Convention, it was agreed by these universities to adopt most of the Rugby Football Union rules. Teeth can be very numerous (up to 250) in several species. Within a few years, however, Harvard had both adopted McGill's rugby rules and had persuaded other US university teams to do the same. In many species, the jaws are elongated, forming a distinct beak; for some species like the Bottlenose, there is a curved mouth that looks like a fixed smile. This made it easy for Harvard to adapt to the rugby-based game played by McGill and the two teams alternated between their respective sets of rules.

The head contains the melon, a round organ used for echolocation. At the time, Harvard students are reported to have played the "Boston Game" — a running code — rather than the FA-based kicking games favored by US universities. Dolphins have a fusiform body, adapted for fast swimming. Modern American football grew out of a match between McGill University of Montreal, and Harvard University in 1874. See evolution of cetaceans for the details. This is also often considered to be the first US game of college football, in the sense of a game between colleges (although the eventual form of American football would come from rugby, not soccer). They entered the water roughly 50 million years ago. The first match generally said to have occurred under English FA (soccer) rules in the USA was a game between Princeton and Rutgers in 1869.

Modern dolphin skeletons have two small rod shaped pelvic bones thought to be left-over hind legs. The game gradually gained a following, and the Montreal Football Club was formed in 1868, the first recorded football club in Canada. Dolphins, along with whales and porpoises, are descendants of land-living mammals, most likely of the Artiodactyl order. However, the first game of "rugby" in Canada is generally said to have taken place in Montreal, in 1865, when British Army officers played local civilians. See also wolphin. Bethune devised rules based on the Rugby School game. There has also been a reported hybrid between a beluga and a narwhal. Barlow Cumberland and Frederick A.

Dall's Porpoises and Harbour Porpoises have hybridized in the wild. In 1864, at Trinity College, Toronto, F. Blue Whales, Fin Whales and Humpback Whales all hybridize in the wild. The club may have invented the "Boston Game", a running code which was being played several years later in Massachusetts. In the wild, bands of males of one dolphin species have been observed to mate with lone female Spinners. However, the rules that the Oneida club used are also unknown, and it was formed before the FA rules were formulated. In the wild, Spinner Dolphins have sometimes hybridised with Spotted Dolphins and Bottlenose Dolphins. It has often been said that this club was the first to play soccer outside Britain.

In captivity, a Bottlenose Dolphin and a Rough-Toothed Dolphin produced hybrid offspring. The first "football club" in the USA was the short-lived Oneida Football Club in Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 1862. This mating has since been repeated in captivity and a hybrid calf was born. A football club was formed at the university soon afterwards, although its rules of play at this stage are unclear: it is not known whether they played a kicking or handling game, or both, and its members mostly played against each other. In 1933, three strange dolphins were beached off the Irish coast; these appeared to be hybrids between Risso's Dolphin and the Bottlenose Dolphin. The first documented football match in Canada was a game played at University College, University of Toronto on November 9, 1861. They are sometimes called "blackfish":. In 1827, a Harvard University student composed a humorous epic poem called The Battle of the Delta, one of the first accounts of football in American universities.

Six animals in the family Delphinidae are commonly called "whales" but are strictly speaking dolphins. By the 1820s, a game known as Ballown was being played at the College of New Jersey (later known as Princeton University) and Old Division Football was being played at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. . As was the case in Britain, by the early 19th century, North American schools and universities played their own local games, between sides made up of students. The family Delphinidae is the largest in the Cetacea, and relatively recent: dolphins evolved about 10 million years ago, during the Miocene. (Ironically, Blackheath now lobbied to ban hacking.) The first official RFU rules were adopted in June 1871. They are found worldwide, mostly in the shallower seas of the continental shelves, and all are carnivores, mostly eating fish and squid. However, there was no generally accepted set of rules for rugby until 1871, when 21 clubs in England came together to form the Rugby Football Union (RFU).

Most species weigh about 50 to 200 kg (110 to 440 lb). There were also "rugby" clubs in Ireland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. They vary in size from 1.2 m (4 ft) and 40 kg (88 lb) (Maui's Dolphin), up to 9.5 m (30 ft) and 10 tonnes (the Orca). In Britain, by 1870, there were about 75 clubs playing variations of the Rugby School game, including Blackheath (founded in 1858 and arguably the world's oldest surviving, non-university rugby club). There are almost 40 species of dolphin in 17 genera. These first FA rules still contained elements that are recognisable in other games for instance, a player could make a fair catch and claim a mark and if a player touched the ball behind the opponents' goal line, his side was entitled to a free kick at the goal 15 yards from the goal line. Orcas and some related species belong to the Delphinidae family and therefore qualify as dolphins, even though they are called whales in common language. After the final meeting on 8 December the FA published the "Laws of Football", the first comprehensive set of rules for the game later known as Association football (or, colloquially, soccer).

Porpoises (suborder Odontoceti, family Phocoenidae) are thus not dolphins in our sense. The motion was carried nonetheless but at the final meeting, Campbell withdrew his club from the FA. In this article, the second definition is used. He said, "hacking is the true football". It can mean:. Campbell, the representative from Blackheath and the first FA treasurer, objected strongly. The word is used in a few different ways. W.

"a 'fish' with a womb". Most of the delegates were favourable to this suggestion but F. The name is from Ancient Greek δελφίς delphis meaning "with a womb", viz. At the fifth meeting a motion was proposed that these two rules be expunged from the FA rules. Dolphins are aquatic mammals related to whales and porpoises. The two contentious draft rules were as follows:. In the William Gibson short story Johnny Mnemonic and the film by the same name (starring Keanu Reeves), cyborg dolphins were used in war-time by the military to find submarines and, after the war, by a group of revolutionaries to decode encrypted information. The Cambridge rules differed from the draft FA rules in two significant areas; namely 'running with the ball' and 'hacking' (kicking an opponent in the shins).

One of the mates of the ship is named Akeakamai, in honor of the real-life dolphin from Louis Herman's animal language research. At the beginning of the fourth meeting, attention was drawn to the fact that a number of newspapers had recently published the Cambridge Rules of 1863. In the book Startide Rising by author David Brin, the spaceship Streaker is manned by neo-dolphins (dolphins genetically engineered to match human intelligence). At the close of the third meeting, a draft set of rules were published that most of the delegates were happy to endorse, but this agreement was not to last. In one scene, the dolphins' misbehavior elicits the following quote from Zissou: "Son of a bitch, I'm sick of these dolphins.". In total, six meetings were held between October and December 1863. In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, marine researcher Zissou (played by Bill Murray) has trained reconaissance dolphins which apparently are temperamental and rarely follow their instructions. Rugby, Eton and Winchester did not even reply.

In seaQuest DSV and seaQuest 2032, Darwin the dolphin could communicate with English speakers using a vocoder, an invention that translated the clicks and whistles to English and back. With the exception of Thring at Uppingham, most schools declined. Mike and the 'Bots then quickly apoligize. The first meeting resulted in the issuing of a request for representatives of the public schools to join the association. While doing so, the SOL gets blasted by a ship that turns out to be piloted by dolphins. The aim was to produce a single code of football that everybody could agree to and to set up a governing body for the regulation of the game. In the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Devil Fish," Mike and the 'Bots mock dolphins. Charterhouse was the only school represented at that first meeting.

Their logo depicts an aqua-colored bottlenose dolphin wearing an American football helmet and jumping in front of a coral-colored sunburst. The meeting had been called, not by public school figures, but by members of several football clubs in the London Metropolitan area. An American National Football League (NFL) team is named the Miami Dolphins. It was the world's first official football body. A book called 'The Music of Dolphins' was written by Karen Hesse, about a girl who had lived with dolphins since the age of four. On the evening of October 26, 1863 at the Freemason's Tavern in Great Queen Street, London, The Football Association (FA) met for the first time. Ecco the Dolphin stars in a series of games for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Game Gear, Sega Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. This later revised version of the Cambridge Rules rules were to form the basis of what eventually became the rules adopted by The Football Association (FA).

After study at the Dolphins Plus research center in Key Largo, Florida, fantasy author Ken Grimwood wrote dolphins into his 1995 novel Into the Deep, including entire chapters written from the viewpoint of his dolphin characters. In early October of 1863 a new revised set of Cambridge Rules rules were drawn up by a seven man committee representing former pupils from Harrow, Shrewsbury, Eton, Rugby, Marlborough and Westminster. Their story is told in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. Thring, who had been one of the driving forces behind the original Cambridge Rules, was now a master at Uppingham School and he issued his own rules of what he called "The Simplest Game" (these are also known as the Uppingham Rules). However, their behavior was misinterpreted as playful acrobatics. C. In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, dolphins are the most intelligent creatures on Earth and tried in vain to warn humans of the impending destruction of the planet. In 1862, J.

The television show was based on a 1963 film, and remade as a feature film in 1996 starring Elijah Wood and Paul Hogan (actor), as well as a television series running from 1995-2000 starring Jessica Alba. The official name of the code is now Australian football. The popular television show Flipper, created by Ivan Tors, portrayed a dolphin in a friendly relationship with two boys, Sandy and Bud; a kind of sea going Lassie, Flipper understood English unusually well and was a marked hero: "Go tell Dad we're in trouble, Flipper! Hurry!" The show's theme song contains the lyric no one you see / is smarter than he. By 1866, however, several other clubs in the Colony of Victoria had agreed to play an updated version of the Melbourne FC rules, which were later known as "Victorian Rules" and/or "Australasian Rules". Foraging - A recent study reported that wild bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops) in Western Australia use sponges to forage in the sea bed for food.[2]. Australian Rules is sometimes said to be the first form of football to be codified but — as was the case in all kinds of football at the time, there was no official body supporting the rules — and play varied from one club to another. Stunning - using the echolocation melon, very loud clicks are directed at prey, stunning them. The 1859 rules did not include some elements which would soon become important to the game, such as the requirement to bounce the ball while running.

Fish Wacking - where the dolphin uses its fluke to strike the fish, stunning it and sometimes sending it clear out of the water. The club had a strong and long-standing association with the Melbourne Cricket Club and cricket ovals — which vary in size and are much larger than the fields used in other forms of football — became the standard playing field. Corralling - where fish are chased to shallow water where they are more easily captured. However, running while holding the ball was allowed and although it was not specified in the rules, an oval ball (like those later used in rugby) was used. Herding - where a superpod will control a school of fish while individual members take turns plowing through the herd, feeding. A free kick was awarded for a mark (clean catch). Short-finned Pilot Whale, Globicephala macrorhynchus. These men had similar backgrounds to Wills and their code also had pronounced similarities to the Sheffield rules, most notably in the absence of an offside rule.

Long-finned Pilot Whale, Globicephala melas. Harrison). False Killer Whale, Psudoorca crassidens. A. Pygmy Killer Whale, Feresa attenuata. C. Killer Whale, Orcinus orca. Thompson and Thomas Smith (some sources include H.

Melon-headed Whale, Peponocephalia electra. B. La Plata Dolphin (Franciscana), Pontoporia blainvillei. Hammersley, J. Genus Pontoporia