http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/11ideas1-14.html?_r=0
By AARON RETICA
New York Times, Published: December 11, 2005
Sometimes, when a dolphin in Shark Bay, off the coast of Western Australia, prepares to forage, she drops to the sea floor, rips a fat conical chunk of sea sponge out of it, covers her beak with the sponge cone and sets to work. After she finds the fish she wants, she drops the sponge. “Sponging," as the scientists at the Shark Bay Dolphin Research Project call this behavior, is an unusual instance of an animal using another animal as a tool, but that is not what makes the sponging interesting to biologists. It’s that dolphins learn to use the sponges – to probe deeply for food while protecting their beaks – from their mothers.
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