Rare video shows a bottlenose dolphin using the ‘mud-ring feeding’ technique alone. More often a group behavior, it has been observed only among Florida dolphins.
Dolphins in Florida have a special way of hunting: They stir up ring-shaped plumes of mud with their tails and corral fish into an ever-tightening circle. The frightened fish then jump out of the water, often into the waiting mouths of dolphins.
To date, this behavior has been observed almost exclusively in groups of bottlenose dolphins in a few parts of Florida, says Stefanie Gazda, a researcher at the University of Florida who was the first to publish an extensive study on the phenomenon back in 2005.
Now a single dolphin near St. Petersburg, Florida, has been filmed employing this hunting trick solo.
Michael McCarthy, a hobbyist filmmaker and owner of a company that makes transparent watercraft—See Through Canoe—was recently
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