I was screaming: Scientists shocked as dolphins filmed using shells to trap prey for the first time

Researchers are shell-shocked at the latest marine discovery.Dolphins have been filmed using shells to ensnare their prey off the coast of Australia, marking the first time this clever tactic has been caught on camera, per a bombshell paper in Marine Mammal Science.“The second I saw that shell in the air, I immediately knew what was happening,” the study’s head author, Alexis Levengood, a marine mammal biologist at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, told ScienceAlert.Levengood said she and her team were on a research vessel off Hervey Bay when they spotted a female Pacific bottlenose “dolphin raising something large out of the water,” the BBC reported.She instantly recognized the behavior as “shelling,” when dolphins flush prey into a large empty seasnail shell.Then, the impromptu fish trap to the surface and drains the quarry into their mouths like a fishy oyster shooter.In the dramatic clip captured in 2025, the brainy cetacean can be seen holding a shell aloft, and then dropping it in the water, before snatching up a fish that escaped its calcified prison.“I was screaming to the students that were on the boat with me in excitement, because I was just so excited that we were actually witnessing this here on the east coast,” exclaimed Levengood.While the behavior had been observed in 2013 in Shark Bay, Western Australia, this was the first video evidence of the ingenious prey-snatching method.And this wasn’t some fleeting party trick, either.

In another clip from Hervey Bay, a mother and a calf could be seen shelling together, demonstrating that the behavior is passed down from generation to generation and not between peers as previously believed.“We saw the mother surface with a shell, the fish inside escaped and the dolphin dropped the shell to chase the fish,” said Levengood.“Then, minutes afterwards, the dolphin calf picked up the shell and held it the same way as its mother.”While it’s yet unclear if either was ...