This thought came to me when the wild dolphins Apple TV screen saver came up on my TV screen. I swear I wasn’t high but I imagined their pod coming across a huge humpback or a pod of Orcas and wondered how they interact or if they just avoid each other altogether? They are very intelligent animals so I’m curious.
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Dolphins, especially Orcas are very aggressive towards other porpoises (whales). Orcas are known specifically to attack whales and dolphins so they definitely wouldn’t be friendly towards other aquatic mammals. There are some reports of whales adopting other aquatic mammals. If I remember correctly, a pod or sperm whales was reported to have adopted a deformed dolphin into their family and a group of beluga whales was reported to have adopted a narwhal.
Dolphins and orcas use echo location to navigate and use the same nasal cavity to communicate. Whales (baleen) sing or Hum to communicate and rely on memory to navigate and whiskers to sense close objects. I wouldn’t be surprised if sperm whales and orcas/dolphins could communicate somehow. Orcas and dolphins can communicate with each other
Can’t speak about all of them, but I remember learning that for orcas, they can’t even communicate with other orcas from different parts of the ocean. Ie orcas from the north pacific can’t communicate with orcas from the south pacific or atlantic
Have you seen Blue Planet II yet? There’s a nice segment about a big (annual oirc?) meetup of bottlenose dolphins and false killer whales.
Here’s a little snippet about it, which is really just a teaser for the series: https://www.bbcearth.com/news/enter-the-mysterious-world-of-the-false-killer-whale
It is commonplace for different dolphin species to mix for a while. For example, pilot whale pods can be joined by Atlantic wide-sideds, and Risso’s can join bottlenoses. It’s called association. Some orca ecotypes are also tolerant of dolphins, while other orca ecotypes hunt dolphins, so dolphins actively avoid their cousins.
But as far as I know, there is no communication between them. That doesn’t mean they don’t understand each other – one species may listen to the other, but there’s no discussion. In the end they simply chase the same prey for a while (which happens if prey is bountiful, so no competition is necessary), or when they are in transit (when there is no prey, so competition is not necessary).