Dolphins Can Recognize Each Other By Taste Of Their Urine, Study Finds

According to recent research, ocean mammals have a special sense of taste that enables them to identify friends and family members through excretions like pee.

Researchers wanted to observe how the sea creatures responded to urine samples from various people, according to a study that was published in the journal Science Advances.

It was found that dolphins were more likely to be interested in urine taken from familiar animals than randos.

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“Dolphins explored urine samples for longer if they came from known animals or when they were presented together with the dolphin’s unique and distinctive signature whistle, an acoustic identifier that works like a name,” professor Vincent Janik, director of the Scottish Oceans Institute and lead author of the study, told the Guardian.

Bottlenose dolphins that tourists might see swimming with at Dolphin Quest resorts in Bermuda and Hawaii were used by researchers.

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The first objective was to see if dolphins use their distinctive whistles in the same way that people rely on names, according to colleague Jason Bruck, a marine biologist at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas.

That required Bruck to discover a second method via which dolphins could recognize one another. Fortunately, he recalled that another researcher had previously seen wild dolphins swimming over what the website described as "plumes of urine," and he assumed the animals might be utilizing it as an ID method.

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“It was a shot in the dark,” Bruck said. “And I was not expecting it to work, to be honest.”

Still, it did.

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Company, as dolphins lack a sense of smell, they would recognize each other by swimming through the excretions of their friend with their mouths to acquire a huge taste of it.

“In other animals, it’s very difficult to separate the sense of smell from the sense of taste. So this is a really exciting opportunity to just study how taste works in this unique way,” Bruck told the network.

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The scientists discovered that the participating dolphins spent three times as much time examining their urine as they did to stranger's urine.

Bruck also observed that the dolphins appeared to share their fascination with the experiment.

“The dolphins were very, very keen to participate,” Bruck told National Geographic. “Usually, dolphins get bored with my experiments. We were tapping into something that is part of the dolphins’ world.”

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