Dolphins Can Stay Awake For 15 Days???

 
Dolphins can stay awake… for 15 days??? 

This news just in from the online UK newspaper, The Telegraph:  

In fact, dolphins may be able to stay awake for longer. Recent scientific testing in California of two smart bottlenosed dolphins, called Nay and Say, was planned for 30 days but was curtailed after 15 due to a storm.

Apparently dolphins can sleep with one eye open and half of their brain – called unihemispheric sleep. This ‘allows them to come to the surface every so often to breath, and remain constantly vigilant for sharks.’ 

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This is exactly the kind of performance I need from a First Mate. Should take about 28 days to cross the Atlantic, from the Canaries to the Caribbean.

I need a First Mate who can be constantly vigilant twenty four hours a day making sure we don’t get run down by a freighter or bump into a whale or a shark en route.  

When solo-sailing oceans, you can normally only nap for 15 minutes at a time. Then you’ve got to wake up and scan the horizon for ships. 20 minutes is the approx length of time it takes a cargo ship to blast from the horizon across the waves over to crush your boat (should you happen to be on a collision course).

That’s why I’ve been training the Can Opener for months with ‘sleep interruption drills’. But now I can…

(Can Opener: You mean walking on my face at 3am wasn’t just about opening the smoked oyster tin for you?)

…now I can replace the Can Opener with a dolphin First Mate that is vigilant non-stop day and night AND catches his own food!  

Huh. Last week I wanted to eat a dolphin. Today I want to adopt one. Times change. This news puts a whole new spin on things…

Can Opener: Eat one of them??– that was a basking shark! …Hey, replace ME??

Captain Cat: A shark? (Really?) Well… same difference.

Can Opener: Replace me? Who would polish your orb, catalogue your wig collection, write your Jackie Chan fan letters?

Captain Cat: …Good point. Good enough to make me pause whilst drafting my profile for the dolphin dating site I just bookmarked…

Can Opener: I‘ve got the opposable thumb, Furrball. I‘m the only one ’round here bookmarking anything. That was a secondhand cat site I just bookmarked. 

Captain Cat: ??… 
Hmm… Gives one paws for thought…

–Captain Cat 

(transcribed by the Can Opener)

 Previously: Dolphins

Shark for Lunch!

Photo by: Anita363

‘Lunch!’ said I, my whiskers twanging with anticipation, gazing out over the chunky sea. 

We were in the North Channel last weekend, just west of Lymington heading into the Solent when – most amazingly and unusually – we sighted one, probably a basking shark.

‘It’s not that kind of a safari,’ said the Can Opener. ‘They’re twenty million times bigger than you – you’re lucky they’re filter feeders that only eat small things. Plankton, algae, felis domesticus…. Just keep taking the photos.’ 

You can’t win every battle. Got some great shots though. I’m putting them in an album entitled, ‘Meals I Might Have Had’.

–Captain Cat 

(transcribed by the Can Opener)

Dolphin Sighting!

Absolutely beautiful. They played in our bow wave for ages.

They were about 6 feet long and probably some of the ‘Striped Dolphin’ (Stenella coeruleoalba), common in the Med. 

The Can Opener refuses to let me retain one as a pet. Most unreasonable, wittering on about bathtub size and water salination issues. He is becoming obstreporous. 

–Captain Cat

 (transcribed by the Can Opener)