Watch Video: Octopus chokes dolphin to death, find Australian researchers

Sydney : A male Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin has become the first known cetacean who died after an octopus choked him, says a new study. Researchers at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia found that in a first time ever an octopus has choked a dolphin to death.

The body of young male dolphin was recovered from a beach which is about two hours to the south of Perth. During the post-mortem of the body in August 2015, doctors found bits of a Maori octopus were still hanging out of his mouth.

According to a report by National Geographics, it is believed that Dolphin must have tried to swallow the octopus but it got stuck in his mouth. The details about autopsy have been published in a recent study in the journal Marine Mammal Science.

Interestingly, Dolphins have the ability to disengage their epiglottis — a flap of tissue that connects the larynx to the blowhole — to open up their throats and swallow larger pieces of food. In this case, Stephens says that the 4.6-pound cephalopod seems to have grabbed onto Gilligan’s larynx with a tentacle. This prevented it from reconnecting to the dolphin’s breathing apparatus, thereby suffocating him to death.

This is the first case when a dolphin death has been seen under such a scenario. However, the scientists have suspected that it could be a case that happens more often in nature.