Bottlenose Dolphins Found To Be One Of The Only Mammals In The World With A 'Seventh Sense'

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Bottlenose dolphins are well-known for being very smart, but did you know they have a special 'seventh sense'?

These dolphins are one of the most looked-at sea animals globally, and scientists have just found out about the bottlenose dolphins' super cool seventh sense.

Dolphins have a row of special pores on their snouts called vibrissal crypts, and these pores are packed with nerve endings, making them super sensitive.

In 2022, a research study discovered that these holes help dolphins sense faint electric fields in the water.

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But, until recently, scientists didn't know just how faint these fields could be.

In a study conducted by researchers from the University of Rostock and Nuremberg Zoo in Germany, two captive dolphins, Dolly and Donna, were involved in an experiment. The dolphins were trained to place their snouts against a metal bar with electrodes submerged in the water.

Once in position, the dolphins received a randomly generated stimulus, which could either be an electrical signal or nothing at all.

If the dolphins sensed something, they were trained to swim away from the bar. Conversely, if they sensed nothing, they remained in the same place.

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Successful detections of an electric field earned the dolphins a reward in the form of fish.

The results of the experiment demonstrated that the dolphins could use the sensitive pores on their snouts to detect electric fields as weak as 2.4 and 5.5 microvolts per centimeter.

The researchers concluded that while dolphins may not be as sensitive to electric fields as sharks and rays, they do possess the ability to use electroreception similarly.

This adaptation allows them to detect faint electric fields generated by the bodies of their prey while hunting.

Lead researcher, Guido Dehnhardt, said: "The sensitivity to weak electric fields helps a dolphin search for fish hidden in sediment over the last few centimetres before snapping them up."

Furthermore, the researcher believes that the dolphins' capability to sense electricity might assist them in various situations, including orienting themselves with respect to the Earth's magnetic field.

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The fascinating discoveries about dolphins don't stop there. Recent findings have unveiled the existence of the first-ever dolphin with 'thumbs.'

Photographs reveal a peculiar-looking dolphin with hook-shaped structures resembling 'thumbs' on its flippers.

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Alexandros Frantzis, the scientific coordinator and president of the Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute who took the photos, said: "It was the very first time we saw this surprising flipper morphology in 30 years of surveys in the open sea and also in studies while monitoring all the stranded dolphins along the coasts of Greece for 30 years."

Considering that a 2017 study suggests that dolphins are nearly on par with humans in terms of 'planetary dominance,' there's a shared hope that the researchers are accurate in stating that the discovered 'thumbs' on dolphins are not opposable.