Door Melle van den Berg, Pieter 't Hoen en Jelmer Oosthoek • donderdag 28 juli 2011, 09:28

Dolphins turn increasingly switching to a vegetarian diet. More than half of all dolphins now live exclusively on seaweed and plankton. This confirmed their status as highly intelligent and environmentally conscious planet dwellers.   As written by Johnny Hoogerland (no relation to the cyclist) this week in the leading journal Nature.

Traditional marine mammals eat mostly fish and squid, but those days seem gone forever. Hoogerland discovered that the diet of the animals in the past ten years has changed significantly. "I communicated last year with a dwarf Atlantic dolphin when the conversation ended casually about eating fish. Bram tells [the name of the dwarf conscious dolphin ] me coolly that his family group for years stopped with eating fish. "Hoogerland continued his research and discovered that this is a global trend.

Striking is the consensus among dolphins. The white-sided dolphins, porpoises and even the notoriously conservative rocker are all working to preserve their diet and thus the stock back up to standard for future generations. Only species like the orca eats a few days a week (MSC certified) fish.

Wakker Dier Association objects to the name of the diet of the intelligent mammals. "Everybody knows you can't call a plankton diet 100% vegetarian. Besides phytoplankton [plants] there will always be a large part zooplankton [small animals and larvae] presence. "

Translated from dutch into english

Source: http://www.speld.nl/2011/07/28/steeds-meer-dolfijnen-vegetarier/