"WASHINGTON — Some dolphins in Australia have a special technique to flush fish from the seafloor. They hunt with a sponge on their beak, like a clown nose.

Using the sponge to protect from sharp rocks, the dolphins swim with their beaks covered, shoveling through rubble at the bottom of sandy channels and stirring up barred sandperch for a meal.

But this behavior — passed down through generations — is trickier than it looks, according to new research published Tuesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

Hunting with a sponge on their face interferes with bottlenose dolphins’ finely tuned sense of echolocation, of emitting sounds and listening for echoes to navigate."

Christina Larson reports  for the Associated Press July 15, 2025. [2]