Humans blow smoke rings but dolphins
have a much healthier habit. The attached video is of dolphins playing
with rings which they have the ability to make under water to play with.
It isn't known how they learn this, or if it's an inbred ability.
As if by magic the dolphin does a
quick flip of its head and a silver ring appears in front of its pointed
beak. The ring is a solid, donut shaped bubble about 2-ft across, yet it
doesn't rise to the surface of the water! It stands upright in the water
like a magic doorway to an unseen dimension.
The dolphin then pulls a small silver
donut from the larger one. Looking at the twisting ring for one last
time a bite is taken from it, causing the small ring to collapse into a
thousands of tiny bubbles which head upward towards the water's surface.
After a few moments the dolphin creates another ring to play with. There
also seems to be a separate mechanism for producing small rings, which a
dolphin can accomplish by a quick flip of its head.
An explanation of how dolphins make
these silver rings is that they are'air-core vortex rings'. Invisible,
spinning vortices in the water are generated from the tip of a dolphin's
dorsal fin when it is moving rapidly and turning. When dolphins break
the line, the ends are drawn together into a closed ring. The higher
velocity fluid around the core of the vortex is at a lower pressure than
the fluid circulating farther away. Air is injected into the rings via
bubbles released from the dolphin's blowhole. The energy of the water
vortex is enough to keep the bubbles from rising for a
reasonably few seconds of play time.
