Some things are too good not to pass along. Reader and cutting competitor Billy Emerson sent me a link to an incredible underwater video of dolphins playing  ring-shaped bubbles that they create under water. As if by magic, the dolphin flips its head and a ring appears and floats upright in the water like a doorway to an unseen dimension.

Although its not known how dolphins learn to do this or if it is an inbred ability, researchers at the Project Delphis underwater laboratory in Hawaii do know how the bubbles are created. The dolphins inject air into water vortices about the thickness of a straw and one to two feet in diameter. Because the rings don not rise to the surface, dolphins can play with these underwater toys by moving them around with their heads. They can even bounce the rings off the walls and elongate them with a flick of their dorsal fins into 15-foot corkscrews.

Project Delphis is a conservation effort to save wild dolphins, as well as an international dolphin behavior and cognition research project. Don White had long seen the need to establish scientific evidence that would shed light on the issue of dolphin intelligence, and in 1985, together with pioneer dolphin advocate Dexter Cate, created Project Delphis to investigate dolphin intelligence. Project Delphis research methodology is unique for scientific work with dolphins, in that all work is done purely on the dolphins’ own motivation, with no food reward.

Click here for Don White’s article Mystery of the Silver Rings.