DOLPHINS USE TASTE TO FIND PEE PALS

Think about people you know, and how you could tell they were around even if you couldn’t see them: perhaps their voice, or a favoured perfume.

For bottlenose dolphins, it’s the taste of urine and signature whistles that allow them to recognise their friends at a distance, according to a study in Science Advances.

“Dolphins keep their mouths open and sample urine longer from familiar individuals than unfamiliar ones,” first author Jason Bruck of the Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas wrote.

“This is important because dolphins are the first vertebrate ever shown to have social recognition through taste alone.”

The team wrote that the use of taste could be beneficial in the open ocean because urine plumes persist for a while after an animal has left.

This alerts dolphins to the recent presence of that individual even if it had not signalled its presence vocally.

Dolphins do not have olfactory bulbs, leaving the team certain it was taste and not smell at play.

Implications of the work include that human-caused pollution such as oil spills or other chemical run-off may impede the dolphins’ ability to signal one another, thus doing even more harm than previously thought.