Then along came Moko, who approached the whales and appeared to lead them as they swam 200 yards along the beach and through a channel out to the open sea.
“Moko just came flying through the water and pushed in between us and the whales,” Juanita Symes, another rescuer, told The Associated Press.
“She got them to head toward the hill, where the channel is. It was an amazing experience.”
Lots of animals cooperate with humans. I read a story of killer whales that had cooperated with humans for eons in Australia until the white men decided to kill the killer whales. Then they quit cooperating. What they would do is help humans hunt other whales in exchange for the tongue. Once they were betrayed they quit helping.
I recently read of birds who cooperate with other animals in exchange for food. Luring other animals to a kill in order to get the dead animal’s flesh opened up for easier eating, or in order to get a bee hive smashed for easier access to honey. In Japan birds are using traffic to break open nuts. I’m sure they feel this is a cooperative venture with us, that we’re helping them open the nuts.
Perhaps cooperation isn’t the same as altruism, but I think it’s similar. Living with so many birds I know that any creature that has such a propensity toward theivery and cheating is also capable of kindness and other expressions of high intelligence. My bird will apologize sometimes.
Wow, great story! Diane, I think your examples are closer to what I have heard called “symbiosis”, where animals join forces when it’s to their mutual advantage. e.g. The pilot fish and the shark. Surely we’ll never really understand the workings of all creatures’ minds, though. I love reading about that kind of stuff.
She’s second-hand from someone who could not take care of her. She’s also born and raised locally so not an imported bird.
I don’t think she’s done much that is specifically altruistic. She’s more greedy and self-centered than anything else. But she is aware of human emotion and feels bad if she hurts someone, which is easy for her to do with that powerful beak she has.
Oh wow. One time I was in a pet store and somebody put one of those kinds of cockatoos on my shoulder. It was preening my hair and suddenly it took my earlobe in its mouth and was licking it, which felt really weird, then it BIT DOWN and very nearly made me bleed because of the force it used. I don’t think it was trying to hurt me because when I shrieked it stopped immediately and sort of looked at me as if to say “I’m so sorry!”
A few years ago after a boating mishap in the Gulf of Mexico near here, a man crawled ashore one morning to relate that dolphins had circled him to protect him from sharks. They then spent the night pushing him to shore.
Opinions varied as to whether he had hallucinated the event or not, but it really wasn’t possible for him to have covered the distance under his own power, whether aided by currents or not, and without having been eaten along the way.
As I recall, he said they were a bit scary at first, but quite nice.
