Abstract
OVER the past 50 years there has been much speculation about the energetic cost of swimming and wave-riding by dolphins1–11. When aligned properly in front of the bow of moving ships1–3, in the stern wake of small boats4,5, on wind waves6, and even in the wake of larger cetaceans7–9, the animals appear to move effortlessly through the water without the benefit of propulsive strokes by the flukes. Theoretically, body streamlining as well as other anatomical and behavioural adaptations contribute to low transport costs in these animals. The economy of movement permitted by wave-riding has been perceived as an energetic advantage for the swimming dolphin2,310, but has been hard to prove in the absence of physiological data for exercising cetaceans. Here we determine the aerobic and anaerobic costs of swimming and wave-riding in bottlenose dolphins and find that the minimum cost of transport for swimming dolphins is 1.29±0.05 J kg-1 m-1 at a cruising speed of 2.1 m s-1. Aerobic costs are nearly twice as high for swimming seals and sea lions, and 8–12 times higher for human swimmers12. Wave-riding by dolphins provides additional benefits in terms of speed. The results indicate that behavioural, physiological and morphological factors make swimming an economical form of high-speed travel for dolphins.
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Williams, T., Friedl, W., Fong, M. et al. Travel at low energetic cost by swimming and wave-riding bottlenose dolphins. Nature 355, 821–823 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1038/355821a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/355821a0
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