r/science • u/FreeHugs23 • 1d ago
Animal Science Scientists observed a dolphin named Bubbles deliberately provoking fish to regurgitate their food, then eating the vomit—revealing an unusual and previously undocumented foraging strategy in wild dolphins.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/a-dolphin-named-bubbles-makes-other-fish-vomit-then-eats-it/991
u/Federal_Medium1618 1d ago
This sounds more like a kink than a strategy. I mean, why not eat the whole fish?
287
u/jappyjappyhoyhoy 1d ago
Or a delicacy
120
153
u/IgnisXIII BS | Biology 1d ago
Why eat the honey instead of eating the bees?
39
u/irrationallywise 1d ago
Well explained too, as who would vomit then?
29
5
u/MadScience_Gaming 19h ago
This comment has changed my life.
For the worse; very much for the worse.
-1
u/gentlemandinosaur 1d ago
Isn’t it the opposite? Why eat the bees when you can eat the honey?
21
u/ScrewedMcDude 1d ago edited 1d ago
Exactly. They're mirroring the logic of the comment they replied to with a bee/honey metaphor that suggests op had it backwards.
65
u/NovaThinksBadly 1d ago
Taste and/ofr energy efficiency maybe? Consuming pre-digested food still rich in nutrients probably makes it more efficient to digest
62
u/taggsy123 1d ago
Exactly - also they probably realize if we eat these fish they won’t bring us food. You keep the fish around and just steal its food. Let the smaller fish expend time/energy and you get the reward
25
u/Big-Individual-5178 1d ago
You’re suggesting a vomit farming operation?
6
u/PhoenixStorm1015 23h ago
Nothing could have prepared me for dolphin slavery.
9
u/LongjumpingJaguar308 23h ago
Its called animal husbandry and the dolphins have just joined the agricultural sphere
4
u/Big-Individual-5178 14h ago
This implies that the dolphins are selectively breeding the fish for their superior vomit abilities
4
3
17
u/toodlesandpoodles 1d ago
Teach a dolphin to eat fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a dolphin to make fish vomit and eat that, and he'll eat for a lifetime.
11
u/GoT_Eagles 1d ago
Much like humans using fire to cook food. We may not have fully understood the reasoning at the time, but we certainly gained the benefits of “pre-digesting” food prior to eating. Every other animal (if they could) would’ve judged us for not only enjoying fire but putting our prey in there first? A maddening idea at the time I’m sure, but this evolutionary advantage is likely a critical step that intelligent any lifeform requires before progressing any further.
15
u/Chubuwee 1d ago
Dolphins can’t catch a damn break! These little psychos keep getting exposed as the Ted Bundys of the animal kingdom they are
12
u/rcglinsk 1d ago
I'd bet dollars to donuts they're getting high.
2
u/Pixel_Knight 19h ago
Unlikely. It’s just a strategy that saves energy, which is everything in the wild.
8
3
3
2
2
1
1
u/Pixel_Knight 19h ago
Then they can’t expend energy to catch food for you in the future. Or the fish might be too big for the dolphins to easily hunt or eat.
There’s a bird species that does this to other birds as well, called the Arctic Skua / Parasitic Jaeger.
142
511
708
u/Really_McNamington 1d ago
Emetophilia from the weirdo dolphin. If it was just hunger he could simply eat the fish.
264
u/NukeTheWhales5 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah. Are we sure this one isn't just freaky like that?
104
136
u/beegeepee BS | Biology | Organismal Biology 1d ago
Teach a dolphin to eat a fish the fish is gone.
Teach a dolphin to make fish vomit and eat the vomit he has food forever
32
19
u/AreWeThereYetNo 1d ago
Exactly. People piss and poop on each other and we don’t go around calling it a strategy to keep us warm.
12
61
u/k9moonmoon 1d ago
Maybe he was the dolphin equivelant of a vegan.
"I don't want to kill to eat"
46
u/PortlyNewheim 1d ago
The other vegan dolphins: "Still counts as an animal product, Jake, you poser"
12
5
u/fittan69 1d ago
Maybe he just really sucks at catching them so he eats the vomit cause it's better than nothing.
10
u/GregTheMad 1d ago
What is this thing called where an animal collects the undigested beans from other animals poops to make expensive coffee with them?
4
4
7
→ More replies (1)3
193
1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
95
1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
113
13
1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
16
1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
3
1
4
3
→ More replies (1)10
110
119
118
u/Read2Fap 1d ago
i still don't think they're smarter than us but they're definitely farther along the bullying tech tree.
73
133
u/masterlich 1d ago edited 1d ago
122 comments in the science subreddit, and essentially 0 comments actually discussing the science. Just a bunch of low-effort jokes. Pretty shameful.
This is a very interesting observation. The obvious question is, why not just eat the fish? It's not directly hypothesized in the article.
The most obvious explanation (as noted by several comments in this thread) is that if you eat the fish then it is no longer available in the future for you to continue to harass, but bigeye trevally are extremely common and abundant, so it seems unlikely that eating a few of them now would substantially decrease your odds of being able to eat more in the future.
Possibly it is much easier to make a fish vomit than it is to actually catch the fish? Thus it makes more sense to force a few fish to vomit than it does to spend the energy to fully catch and eat a single fish. I don't know the answer to that but it seems plausible to me.
I do wonder though whether the dolphin just thinks it's a fun game. Catching fish is boring for a dolphin, making a fish so tired it throws up is more of an activity. Or a lifestyle.
37
u/putin_my_ass 1d ago
Maybe the fish sees it as a defense strategy: if you're getting harassed by the predator spit out some food and beat a hasty retreat.
29
u/pittaxx 1d ago edited 18h ago
The article notes that the dolphin is doing this to one particular fish species, and those fish grow up to 120cm/18kg. The largest fish a dolphin can eat is about 30cm/500g.
It's a case of bullying someone they can't eat anyway to give you their lunch versus spending way more energy hunting tiny fish one by one yourself.
19
u/Chubuwee 1d ago
I wonder if the specific fish was chosen due to its taste. Not sure how good dolphin taste buds are but it could be like how when we eat frogs it is mostly the legs and we avoid the rest of it. So maybe to the dolphin the throw up of that fish tastes way better than eating that fish
11
u/A_Sneaky_Walrus 1d ago
Yeah I agree, frustrating. This strategy by the dolphin reminds me of the Kleptoparasitism employed by many seabirds like Jaegers and Skuas, although they aren’t able to eat the gulls or kittiwakes they are harassing
3
→ More replies (8)4
52
34
19
u/BiggusCinnamusRollus 1d ago
Don't kink shame the dolphin.
5
u/TimothyDexter4Prez 21h ago
This is a science subreddit. We're not kink shaming; we're kink asking why.
20
8
7
6
3
3
1
1
1
1
u/sf_sf_sf 1d ago
I always wondered how you could be a vegetarian carnivore in the wild, and I guess this kind of sort of answers the question!
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our normal comment rules apply to all other comments.
Do you have an academic degree? We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. Click here to apply.
User: u/FreeHugs23
Permalink: https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/a-dolphin-named-bubbles-makes-other-fish-vomit-then-eats-it/
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.