Boffins crack secret of dolphins' aquatic prowess American boffins believe they have cracked the scientific riddle known as "Gray's Paradox" - the mystery of how dolphins can manage their amazing physical feats. Famed zoologist Sir James Gray clocked the speedy cetaceans doing better than 20mph in 1936, leading him to theorise that they must have super-slippery hides or some …
"This handily trumps human Olympic swimmers"
Exactly how does the dolphins' swimming ability come in "handy"? Are dolphins ever pitted against human swimmers? From the dolphins' point of view it can only be handy when compared to the abilities of fish, and what's "handy" about it from the humans' point of view eludes me.
The comparison is certainly certainly interesting and informative, but I can't see how it could be described 'handy'. Perhaps the word means nothing?
I find it hard to believe that the mentioned 200 pounds of force, or even the peak 300-400 pounds is ten times as much as expected, when olympic swimmers generate 60-70 pounds of force. Who would seriously believe that an olympic swimmer can generate twice the force when swimming than a dolphin can?
What a truly amazing use of (no doubt) all the research money they were given.
Dolphins are stonger than we previously thought. Wow.
I can think of so many ways this research will benefit mankind. I am so glad that whoever funded this didn't decide to give their money to reseach a cure for cancer or to develop safe renewable energy technology.
Can I suggest a topic for their next project?
How about : 'Bear defecation and it's relationship to arboreal density.'
If Gray thought they had super slippery skin, why didn't he just kill one and see what the tension was in the rope as he dragged it behind a boat at 20mph?
With his following dissection he could try things like putting the skin on waterskis to see it it helped or stimulating the muscles with an electric current and measuring the strength.
Hell, he could have put something in the blow-hole to figure out how much CO2 they were creating, and therefore how much energy they were using.
And they Knighted him?
@ Torben and Jon B - If you read carefully he made those observations in the 1930's. That was close to 30 years before a man was ever recorded to run 100m in under 10 seconds. Current olympic male swimmers swim the 50m freestyle almost 10 seconds quicker than they did back in the 30s, and assuming a similar quadratic relationship ( based on drag) between speed and force implies that swimming 20 percent quicker times requires close to one and a half times the power.
Several years ago a Canadian polar bear biologist was interviewed about a large group of (normally solitary) adult bears who had gathered around a pod of beluga whales that had become trapped in a hole in sea ice too extensive for them to swim to the next clear spot (i.e. they would have suffocated under the ice).
The bears took their time slashing the whales with their claws from the ice and in the water, and when a whale got weak enough one would pull it onto the ice and the group would feast peacefully.
The interviewer asked the biologist how a polar bear could possibly pull a whale out of the water and up onto the ice. His answer, in all its technical glory: "... I guess they're very strong..."
The penguin, because, you know, the OTHER polar region...
@ Tony - Applying cutting edge mathematical techniques to every day problems is a particularly useful way of engaging with your average Joe Bloggs, making the subject seem more interesting to prospective undergrad students and actually verifying the accuracy and reliabilty of the said technique. The same nonlinear computational tools used to model light waves in speciality fibres for high bit rate telecoms could be applied to modelling rogue sea waves as an example. And as a clincher for you, Wei has also used his unique video-based tools towards helping vascular and neurosurgeons solve fluid problems in the human body according to his departmental website. (cue rapturous applause from you)
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