A real and sad history of a striped dolphin trying to "revive" his dead partner!

We started a really normal whale watching day in Pico Island.

Our lookout sent us to a location where he could spot some dolphins jumping.

We pass by a lot of Cory’s shearwaters, and we thought, since it’s a normal behavior, that the dolphins could be in the same location.

All of a sudden we spotted a dolphin head in the water…something really normal to see, what was abnormal was that this specific head was staying still in the water.

We went closer with the boat to see what was going on with this individual, and that was when we confirmed our suspicions…the dolphin was dead.

Suddenly out of the blue another dolphin jumped right near this dead individual acting differently. He was jumping on top of the dolphin desperately slapping the dead dolphin with its tail.

There are only 78 registered behaviors like this one in the world. This is mainly observed in the Genus Sousa and Tursiops species. Actually, there is only one register in the entire world, in Greece in the year of 2016, of a striped dolphin behaving like this.

The jumping dolphin we spotted, was trying, somehow, to revive its partner. We cannot guarantee for sure if it was male or female.

We can confirm that they were adults and we saw that the dead dolphin was hurt…

I wonder if dolphins are that much different than humans….

I don´t think so....

A testimony by Rui Santos
Check the video with more footage: https://youtu.be/J1uCVhzFNic