I've been swimming (snorkel, mask, and fins) one-on-one with 'JoJo' - a wild dolphin who made his home in Grace Bay, Providenciales. We did this one afternoon for about 45 minutes to an hour ... AFTER having 'met' him on several dives that day and before. He showed humor, consideration, interaction, and a degree of respect. We played what I learned afterward were "dolphin games" - a kind of mirroring behavior.
He showed up one afternoon while I was swimming off the dock. He was injured, with a shark bite on his side just below and behind his dorsal. It "seemed" like he felt beat up and just wanted company. (He's a bachelor.) So, we went swimming, side by side. He swam from my left, underneath me and to my other side. For some reason, it occurred to me to do the same thing, so I swam underneath him to HIS other side. Both when he swam under me and I swam under him, I could feel his tail fluke stroke just short of my legs - feeling the water pressure and flow. Now, this is a fellow who could break all the bones in my legs with the power of his tail ... but he CLEARLY took care not to hit me. We continued this "monkey see monkey do" alternately - diving to the bottom and up, diving to the bottom and twisting 1, 2, or 3 times each way, etc. What he did, I did. What I did, he did. After about 30-40 minutes he'd headed back to the dock and behaved as though he'd had enough ... but he swam closer - with his eye open and LOOKING at me. So, I reached out (VERY carefully - since it's illegal to 'molest' JoJo) and stroked his 'chin' with my hand. He nodded his head in what I could only interpret as "Thanks for the company," grazed me with his side ... and swam off. Probably to get something to eat.
About the power of a dolphin ... One of JoJo's favorite sports was tailing our dive boat as it cruised to or from a dive spot at about 25-30 knots. He'd keep up easily and he'd surge forward and touch his nose to the hub of the engine prop! He'd then show some exuberance (like a "look at MY trick!") by lagging back and "porpoising" out of the water and back to the 'game.' That takes an incredibly strong body. Dolphins kill sharks that get too aggressive. They do it by ramming the shark in the side until they're so disabled that they can't swim. (Sharks have cartilage, not bone.) Sometimes the shark gets "lucky" and bites the dolphin. They heal.
About his "humor" ... two stories. A beginners class of divers was gathered in a circle in water about 4' deep, off the beach, going through instruction on wearing the dive gear. JoJo had apparently found hisself a small juvenile reef shark and beat that shark damned near to death. Well, JoJo 'herded' that shark into the midst of these beginning resort divers and then swam rapidly in a circle around the group, keeping them together. Well, these vacationing newbies got REAL excited. Shark! Shark! ... thinking, I suppose, that they had TWO: the one in their midst and the 'one' circling them. The dive instructor couldn't stop laughing. He'd seen JoJo do this before. Apparently JoJo gets a kick out of "hearing" (yes, the water is just deep enough) the 'excitement.' ((Second story.)) Occasionally, JoJo would show up off the beach in the very early morning and catch one of the 'early bird' vacationers grabbing a morning swim when nobody was around, before breakfast. Now, most folks SHOULD be able to tell the difference between a shark's fin and a dolphin's fin ... IF they behaved normally. After all, a shark's tail swings side to side and they don't break the surface to breathe ... while a dolphin's tail fluke swings up and down and they swim like a sine wave - up and down. Well, JoJo would 'lean' and swim with one side of his tail fluke seemingly going side to side and keep his swim level ... as he'd "sneak" up to the morning swimmer. Invariably, the poor target of JoJo's joke would, upon seeing him, damned near get up and walk on the water as he'd (or SHE'd) race for shore, sometimes yelling "Shark!"
Yes... JoJo had a sense of humor. On several dives (before our afternoons swim) he'd show up, look at me, nod, and then, upon seeing another diver cruising the bottom, usually in a sand trough, "sightseeing" the flora and fauna on the bottom, JoJo would swim up behind the diver and 'nudge' him or her (JoJo preferred women) in the butt. The diver would usually assume it was another diver, maybe their dive buddy, while others of us (who'd caught on to his game) would watch in glee awaiting the diver's discovery ... which JoJo would sometimes precipitate by peering quickly into the diver's mask and then darting off (I could only imagine with a laugh).
Yes... JoJo had a sense of humor.
About JoJo's (imagined?) 'laugh' ... Dolphins use sonar. You can actually feel it sometimes and barely (only barely) 'hear' some harmonic. When JoJo 'met' divers, he'd get a full-body sonogram. JoJo knew the difference between males and females. He could SEE the difference - and clothing wasn't in his way. JoJo definitely preferred females. Definitely.
I gotta say ... it's really not a question whether he's almost as 'smart' as people ... for me it's a question of whether some people are even close to being as 'smart' as JoJo.
One thing I think about. Dolphins use sonar. They also emit VERY complex sounds in communication with each other. Those sounds have a strange resemblance to a sonar ECHO. It seems to me that their VOCABULARY is composed of
sonograms or something like hieroglyphs but far, far more complex. (Man's earliest 'languages' were pictographic. Some, like Japanese/Chines Kanji are descended from such pictograms.) I have to wonder at the richness of a vocabulary that's not just 3-dimensional .. but includes an 'interior' view.
On edit: Here, read about JoJo ...
http://www.marinewildlife.org/jojoProject.phpI met Dean when I was down there - he gives newly arrived divers "the word" about JoJo: JoJo can do anything he wants but divers will be
jailed if they harass JoJo. It's NO JOKE. They mean it. When I checked with Dean after my swim with JoJo, Dean acknowledged that JoJo had chosen me as a friend. It made me feel very special - and not in the short yellow bus sense.
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