Delfine „spielen“ mit Walen – und Wale scheinen es zu genießen. Forscher haben Hunderte von Videos und Bildern analysiert, um ein seltenes Phänomen besser zu verstehen: „Spielen“ zwischen Delfinen und Walen.

I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44338-025-00099-2

From the linked article:

Researchers have analysed hundreds of videos and images to better understand a rare phenomenon: “play” between dolphins and whales.

The study, published in the journal Discover Animals, sought to find out if the marine mammals were playing with each other, or if the behaviour is more one-sided.

Whales responded more positively to the dolphins’ play than expected.

They analysed photographs and video taken by the public, tourism operators and scientists. The hundreds of images involved 19 species in 199 separate interactions in 17 locations around the world.

About 1,570 dolphins appeared in the images. Among these, 51% were bottlenose dolphins, 17% common dolphins and 15% were pacific wide-sided dolphins. A total of 425 whales from 6 baleen species were also involved. More than two-thirds were humpback whales, while 16% were grey whales and a further 7% fin whales.

Video analysis suggests that humpback whales responded positively to the interaction with dolphins about a third of the time.