Drone footage of a dolphin hunting

[tailwaters]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28gX_eeXd-Q

[Price3275]

Awesome... never seen a video of that before.

[Big Bend Brian]

Interesting video. Thanks for sharing.
From an energetic standpoint that consumed a lot of energy for that meal.
Brian

[redcodefsu]

I think the dolphin was mainly playing. Looked like an abundance of food. He was just having fun.

[GaryDroze]

I think you're right. Notice how the dolphin lets the poor fishie go a few times, then grabs it again. Like a game of cat and mouse...with the loser paying with its life.

I'm sure many of you have also seen when dolphins are in serious predator mode, where they do concussive tail slaps to stun and confuse mullet schools. Definitely getting a lot back for their energy expenditure in those scenarios.

[MudDucker]

I watched three large dolphins hunting, herding and feeding this weekend right in front of my place in St. James. It was awesome, but I agree, it sure seemed to be a lot of energy expended.

[Ted in Tallahassee]

Fascinating! Man they really work for their food. And it played with it just like a cat with a mouse! I like how the other fish moved right in to try to get a scrap when the target fish was doomed/being played with. Jack crevalle it looked like. They are strong swimmers & hard fighters. Tough nut to crack! I bet it's a lot easier for dolphin to catch & eat trout & reds, which according to scientists eat a whole lot of them.

In another article I was reading on the subject of what inshore bottlenose dolphin eat, some groups of dolphin have learned to eat catfish by biting or tearing them in half (possibly by holding them in their jaws ansd scraping them against the bottom) and eating only the "safe" rear section behind the dorsal/pectoral spines. People would find numbers of front-ends of catfish in areas after dolphin were feeding. The article mentioned that whole catfish are very dangerous for dolphin to eat because they (the spines) can get stuck in their throats, I think it can even kill them.

Smart critters, dolphin.

[Geno67]

They don't have the jaw strength to bite them in two so they bang them around until torn into small enough pieces to eat.