Overview

• The peer-reviewed Discover Animals paper analyses 199 crowd-sourced videos, drone footage and two suction-camera tag recordings, covering 425 baleen whales and 1,570 dolphins across 17 locations.
• Dolphins initiated most encounters by bow-riding near whales’ rostrums in about 80% of observations, and at least one quarter of all interactions—rising to one third for humpback whales—were mutual.
• Aggressive or avoidance behaviours were uncommon, with tail slaps and other distress signals appearing in roughly 5% of cases, indicating predominantly positive or neutral responses.
• Underwater footage from suction-camera tags showed bottlenose dolphins following humpbacks to the ocean floor, revealing sustained engagement beyond surface play.
• Authors acknowledge geographic and observer biases in the crowd-sourced dataset and recommend targeted acoustic recording and systematic observation to explore communication and conservation implications.