{"id":242812,"date":"2026-08-17T17:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T22:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/dolphins-off-western-australia-carry-sea-sponges-on-their-beaks-while-foraging-along-the-ocean-floor-tooluse-behaviour-passed-mainly-from-mothers-to-daughters-making-it-one-of-the-few-animal-cultures"},"modified":"2026-08-17T17:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T22:04:12","slug":"dolphins-off-western-australia-carry-sea-sponges-on-their-beaks-while-foraging-along-the-ocean-floor-tooluse-behaviour-passed-mainly-from-mothers-to-daughters-making-it-one-of-the-few-animal-cultures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/dolphins-off-western-australia-carry-sea-sponges-on-their-beaks-while-foraging-along-the-ocean-floor-tooluse-behaviour-passed-mainly-from-mothers-to-daughters-making-it-one-of-the-few-animal-cultures","title":{"rendered":"Dolphins off Western Australia carry sea sponges on their beaks while foraging along the ocean floor tooluse behaviour passed mainly from mothers to daughters, making it one of the few animal cultures shaped so strongly by gender"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/dolphins-off-western-australia-carry-sea-sponges-on-their-beaks-while-foraging-along-the-ocean-floor-tooluse-behaviour-passed-mainly-from-mothers-to-daughters-making-it-one-of-the-few-animal-cultures.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Somewhere in the deep channels of Shark Bay, a dolphin is cruising along the seabed with a sponge jammed over her nose like a novelty clown accessory.<\/p>\n<p>By <a href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/author\/danielmabanta\/\">Daniel Moran<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Published August 17, 2026 \u00b7 How we edit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Somewhere in the deep channels of Shark Bay, a dolphin is cruising along the seabed with a sponge jammed over her nose like a novelty clown accessory. By Daniel Moran Published August 17, 2026 \u00b7 How we edit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}