Dolphin And Stingray Swimming Together In Open Waters

“Please, Flip, let’s go out a little further. We must not be seen together like this.”
“I don’t care who sees us. I love you, Ray!”

And so goes the tragic love story of Flip and Ray, two starfish-crossed lovers of the Australian shallows, who found each other in a sea ruled by the law of eat or be eaten. Marine biologists would have a field day explaining this one. The curious thing about watching this video after a few seconds is that we start to question who is doing the leading and who the following, but come to realize both alternate following each other. We can’t actually know, without asking them, why they are together. Do they help each other find food? Is the dolphin alone without a pod or family? This certainly rates as one of the stranger duets in nature. We can almost understand when zoo and farm animals of different species form friendships, but out here in the open sea, they have more of a choice.

Maybe they feel safe forming an unlikely alliance, or maybe they just genuinely like each other. Their relationship can hardly be expected to advance beyond the strictly platonic. They probably don’t even like the same food. What does one need in the way of companionship, after all? Just someone to be there for you, I guess.

Another wonderful thing about this video is the discovery of new worlds that drones open up to us. It isn’t likely that a passing boat or even a kayak could get the full scope of what’s going on with these two. Airplanes and helicopters are sometimes seen hovering over ocean fauna when they spot something interesting, like schools of migrating sharks or Manta Rays and such. We must admit this is a serendipitous opportunity, or, “happy accident”, where technology happens to be in the right place at the right time. A remote-controlled flying camera that can actually fly undetected over creatures of the wild behaving exactly the way they want to behave, with the most minimum intrusion.

We wonder how long these two have been at this dalliance. In the human world we might call this an unnatural alliance, but we can hardly say that about two animals in nature who don’t have to observe any of the moral taboos we are brought up to respect. Will they be together tomorrow, or was this encounter a one off event? After a bit it looks like the adult dolphin wearies of his friend and tries to ditch her, perhaps playing hard to get? But then the dolphin turns around, as if he’s had a change of heart, and reunites with the stingray. The drone pans out for the long shot, and it looks like the two have reached the edge of the shallow field of grass.

There are certain to be more mysteries of the wild kingdom ready to be captured by drone pilots, on land and in the sea. We don’t necessarily have to understand or solve them, when simply enjoying the view is its own treat.