Here are 3 human-animal collaborations besides dolphins and Brazilians

We’ve all heard that dogs are man’s best friend, but our canine companions don’t make up the full circle of man’s best friend. Humans have cooperated with wild animals throughout our evolutionary history, fostering mutual relationships known to biologists as mutualistic mutualisms.

One particular association is found in a pool of fresh sharks in Brazil, where fishermen catch fish with the help of local bottlenosed dolphins.Tursiops truncatum gephyreus).

This team-up began a century ago, probably when fishermen first noticed the presence of dolphins as a sense of fish lurking in the dark water, says Mauricio Cantor, a human ecologist at the University of Oregon’s Marine Mammal Institute in Newport.

“Dolphins are really good at finding fish and feeding them off the coast,” he said, “and they’re really fishermen who catch fish with their nets.” Once the fish were mostly secured in the net, the dolphins snagged a few for themselves.

In the study published on January 30 in the Journal of the Academy of Sciences, Singer and colleagues used long-term data to show that dolphins and fishermen respond to cues from others, and without expert partners who know the right steps to dance, the routine falls apart. “This study is really surprising and impressive,” says Pat Shipman, an anthropologist at Penn State University who was not involved with the research.

This fishing partnership is an important part of the cultural identity of both fishermen and dolphins, but the work of Singer and colleagues shows that the practice is declining. It is not only among animal societies. “Most historical cases are declining or are already gone,” Singer says.

Given their rarity and charm, let’s look at some other well-known examples of human-animal cooperation.

People used to come up with orcas to catch whales in South Australia

The bottlenosed dolphin is not the only one that humans have usefully trained. In the 1800s, more hunters began working with orcas.Orcinus orca) to catch a large whale. In Double Bay in South Australia, some would find orcas to exhaust and harass whales, others would find whaling crews (made up of aboriginal Australians and Scottish immigrants) and found prey.

When the whales came and harpooned the whales, they ate the orcas’ tongues — the culinary delights of the orca world — before taking the rest for themselves.

While dolphins and fishermen in Brazil were chasing the same prey – migratory schools of mulletsLiza moans) — orcas and whales are almost entirely different. The key similarity, says Singer, is that there is enough prey for everyone, so that no competition arises to rob society.

This relationship eventually ended when some colonists killed two orcas that drove the cooperative vessel out of the bay, apparently never hunting with humans again.

These birds lead people to honey in Africa

Sometimes the name says it all. so it is with the greater honeysuckle (indicator indicator), which is labeled in both English and Latin on his most famous track. These birds live in sub-Saharan Africa and cooperate with local honey hunters to gain access to the succulent wax.SN: 7/21/16).

Birds, like men, do not like to be stung by bees, so the leader of the honey, who wants to eat the wax, whistles to the man to signal them to follow. Honey leads hunters to the bee nest and allows them to measure the dirty work.

Like orcas, honey-eaters and humans are after different parts of the palm tree: humans want honey, birds want wax. Meyguides are so useful in finding bee nests that the Borana people of East Africa make a special whistle called “fuulido”.“ to fetch them when it is time to hunt for honey.

Similar to dolphins in Brazil, the relationship with honeysuckle is an important part of many African cultures. The legend also has it that the scornful ruler of honey, if the wax is denied to the hunters in advance, will not lead the hunters to the delicious honey, but into the mouth of a predator, like a lion.

Wolves and men were once on the same side hunting big game

To see the ultimate outcome of the human-animal partnership, take a look at 39 percent of the country’s beds, couches, and patios. That’s how many families have a dog in the United States. But it happened that the dog was not at home with men; Native American stories describe peoples in North America cooperating with gray wolves (Wolf dog) to hunt big game like moose and mammoths.

Wolves would run down their prey until they were exhausted, and kill the humans once they were caught. Because these prey items were so large (like large schools of mullet), it didn’t matter that humans and wolves were after the same thing – there was plenty to go around.

Although this rabies is no longer friendly, wolves are still very important in many indigenous cultures. Some of them are still in use, leaving some meat for wolves after hunting.

Even though human-animal partnerships are rare and in decline, they still “give us an example of how positive human interactions with nature can be,” Cantor says.

For Shipman, the urge to fight with other animals is a defining characteristic of humanity. “It is in a way fundamental to humans,” he says, “like a biped.”