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# Dolphins Are Catching Fish With Seashells, and the Kids Are Watching
- URL: https://www.gottabekidding.me/dolphins-are-catching-fish-with-seashells-and-the-kids-are-watching/
- Published: 2026-10-12T10:02:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-12T10:01:59.000Z
- Description: Two dolphin populations on opposite sides of Australia solved the same puzzle with the same tool. What are the odds they both figured out the shell thing on their own?
- Author: Canopy
- Tags: Nature

A dolphin named Maserati surfaced off Hervey Bay, Queensland, in October 2025 with a large shell and a fish trapped inside. The fish got away, and she left the shell behind to go after it. Minutes later, her calf Bentley surfaced holding that shell exactly the way she had.

That sequence, filmed by researchers from the University of the Sunshine Coast, is the first video of a hunting trick called shelling and the first hint that a calf may pick it up by watching its mother. The findings appear in *Marine Mammal Science*.

The trick goes like this. A dolphin chases a fish into a big empty seashell, swims it up to the surface, then shakes it until the water, and the fish, pour out into its mouth.

Here is what makes it stranger. Until now, every published record of shelling had come from Shark Bay, clear across Australia. Alexis Levengood, who led the study, said the two groups of dolphins came up with the same tool and the same technique separately.

It also changes who the teacher is. Scientists had thought dolphins picked up shelling from their peers. Levengood said this footage is the first sign that a mother may pass it down.

Photos taken on local tour-boat trips in 2013 and again in 2019 show dolphins doing the same thing. Nobody had studied the area closely enough to notice.

The fish thought it found a hiding spot. It found a dolphin's lunch box.

**Read the full story at** [University of the Sunshine Coast, August 11, 2026](https://www.usc.edu.au/about/unisc-news/news-archive/2026/august/caught-on-film-east-coast-dolphins-catching-fish-with-shells?ref=gottabekidding.me)

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**Hot Take:** Bentley picked up the shell his mother dropped and practiced the technique on his own, at age unknown, with no thumbs. The bar for "gifted kid" just moved.