Let's Meet the Gang

Day 6:
Thankfully, my landlady has a Dell that I was able to use to upload videos and photos. There are currently three videos on my Facebook wall, and I will get to uploading more soon.

Now it’s time to introduce the gang. Even though I’m still very much getting to know their personalities, I can at least tell you some basic facts about the dolphins here at Dolphin Cove.

Samantha:
Samantha was the only dolphin at Dolphin Cove to be taken from the wild while it was still legal in the 80’s. They don’t know her exact age because she was collected as a calf, but she’s estimated to be around 26 years old. She is the only female at Cove and seems to like that monopolization quite nicely. Sam is currently preggers, approximately halfway through her 12-month pregnancy. Dolphins in human care (the more politically correct word choice for captivity) have a 50% birth success, while the other 50% either die in birth or shortly after due to complications. One example of a calf death post successful birth was due to a hurricane in which pollutants or foreign material was likely introduced into the lagoon where the dolphins were living, causing the vulnerable calf to become terminally ill. Sam just had her ultrasound and the little calf is swimming and looking quite healthy. He’s got a full bladder, which is apparently a good sign. Sam is quite easy to tell apart from the males not only by her smaller size (marginally so, by first glance, as she is currently gigantic, as pregnant mammals go) but by her crooked jaw. She had an accident one night while the trainers were away, and dislocated her jaw. The trainers think she ran into something and the veterinarian opted to allow the jaw to heal crooked rather than resetting the jaw and risking further damage. Sam is still fully functionally, albeit funny-looking with her permanently eschewed jaw. Dolphins don’t chew their food, mainly to avoid saltwater consumption, so the throat simply closes around a fish whole. Therefore, she’s not missing out on any chewing. And somehow, the guys still find her irresistible. Sam has a small chunk out of her right fluke (right “fin” of her tail) that also helps to identify her when her face isn’t visible. Sam is 375 pounds (likely more, now that she’s knocked up and getting fatter by the day) and 8 feet and 5 inches long.

Kimbit:
Kimbit is a handsome fellow. His parents, Dinghy and Little Bit, lived over at Dolphins Plus, the sister facility. Dinghy is still there as the alpha female, but Little Bit died last year from hemachromatosis. The build-up of iron in his blood essentially killed him, and it was obviously a very sad occurrence for both facilities. Kimbit is what the trainers like to call an essentially “perfect” dolphin, by appearance standards. He’s essentially flawless, has few scars and usually has no rake marks from any dolphins on him. He has no real distinguishing characteristics from Leo except that his stomach is more white than pink and he is slightly larger. He also has a small dent above his right eye that looks like a small football. His dorsal fin has two small c-shaped notches on the back. Kimbit is also a darker grey than Leo, though slightly lighter than Alfonz. Kimbit is 465 pounds and 9 feet and 4 inches long. He is 17 years old, and was born just a month after Alfonz.

Alfonz:
Alfonz is the largest of the four dolphins at Cove. He’s a whopping 502 pounds and 9 feet and 7 inches long. He has quite the enormous melon and his peduncle (dorsal fin) dwarfs the other three’s. He has a distinguishing white scar on the front of the peduncle and a yellowish rostrum just like his son, Leo. He has a faint white circle around both eyes, also seen in Leo. Alfonz is a bit of a thief when it comes to feeding time. I don’t know much about him yet, but I’m looking to get to know him better.

Samantha switches back and forth between Alfonz and Kimbit in terms of who she swims with and fools around with, and so those two males tend to stick to her quite closely. This also means that the trainers can’t be sure of who the father is. Perhaps she should go on the Maury Show?

Leo:
Leo is the baby of the group. Born in 2003, he’s only 7 going on 8 years old. He was the first dolphin to be born at Dolphin Cove. He is only 315 pounds and 7 feet and 8.5 inches, but for what he lacks in size he makes up for in adorableness. Alfonz and Nicky (at Theater of the Sea, a non-related facility), Leo’s parents, both had pink bellies, and so Leo has a super-charged pink belly. This gives him a bit more color than the others, although he is a much paler grey than everyone else. Like Alfonz, he has a yellowish rostrum and faint white circles around his eyes. His peduncle is hook-shaped. Leo is the lover of the bunch. Unfortunately, he gets bullied and chased by the other three because he is the submissive one of the group, but for some reason he still always seems to be the most cheerful. For my family that knows my dogs: Leo is definitely the Joey of the bunch, forgetful of any unhappy moments and eager for the bright future. Leo is also one of the quickest learners, and he even sometimes performs his behaviors without being asked. When I say that, I don’t mean he anticipates being asked or does it just to see if he can get a fish. He simply does it to show off, to say, “Look what I did for you!” Leo has been working on a backward strut, which essentially is a behavior where he comes up out of the water partially and pumps his torso back and forth to give the appearance of walking backwards. Mind you, he’s only been working on this behavior with his trainer for a few days, but when I went down to the lagoon with another intern today he was so excited to see us that he did what he thought would most impress us: he did the backward strut. He knew that this new behavior was exciting for his trainer, and so he chose what he thought would make us most excited and did it. That’s a damn smart dolphin. Even though these guys are really well trained in all their behaviors, they don’t usually do them for the heck of it. They do them because they know they’ll get reinforced. The funny thing with Leo is that even a laugh of shout of glee, an expression of joy or love, is enough reinforcement for him to voluntarily do the behavior. Even stranger, he didn’t know he would be positively reinforced with laughter and applause when he did the backward strut; he was performing his own test, simply hoping we would like his performance. And of course, we did. If you can’t already tell, Leo is my favorite.

Unfortunately, Leo has a respiratory illness that causes him to “chuff” on occasion, which really is just a fancy word for loud coughing. Today he was actually breaching and purposely slamming his side against the water in an attempt to dislodge unwanted gunk in his lungs. After he finished chuffing he swam up to another intern and I and twirled for us. I noticed that, along with showing off, he likes to tease a bit, trying to make you think he’s going to do something naughty when he’s really not. For instance, when a dolphin slaps their tail against the water, it’s usually a sign of agitation. Leo will dive down and just as it will seem like he’s going to smack the water and spray us with water, he;ll slide his tail gracefully into the water without so much as a droplet reaching our dry clothes.
When scraping the rogue algae off the dock the other day (now my favorite job despite the crick in my neck after 30 minutes of bending over the docks) he kept coming up to me and nudging me with his rostrum. When that didn’t get a rise out of me (you’re not supposed to reach out for them, no matter how damn cute they’re being) he decided to play the “who’s braver than whom” game. And so, as I diligently scraped algae, Leo opened his mouth and crept slowly towards my arm. At first I immediately withdrew my hand from the water, thinking he was about to gnaw on me. Then I saw his glee as he swam away for a moment. I put my arm back in the water and, low and behold, he came back, mouth open and going for my arm. I kept my arm there for a bit longer until he actually put his mouth around my arm. Granted, he kept his mouth open, but I was unsure of his intentions. Again, I withdrew my arm. He, of course, had won again, although I still didn’t get the game. The third time he came back he actually started to close his mouth around my arm, but never all the way. His teeth never touched my arm, and if I had wanted to I could’ve easily pulled away.
And so, I sat there scraping the algae off the dock as Leo played “chicken” with my arm. He looked at me with those lovable, dopy eyes that said, “I’m gonna nom on your arm if you don’t pull it away,” but at that point I knew better. He was simply trying to get a reaction out of me, and while I wanted to play, I thought that this game would likely be one better to ignore rather than condone. No matter how harmless he is, we don’t want him playing “chicken” with the customers any time soon. Eventually he lost interest in my learned restraint and simply bobbed next to me. At one point he dove down and came back to give me a piece of grass, but after that he decided that I’d figured out his ploy and that he’d have to find a better pastime than freaking me out with fake biting. What a cutie.

Expect another post tomorrow on current dolphin research and the basics of dolphin training.
If anyone ever wants to know anything specific about the dolphins, the facility, or anything else, just leave a comment and I’ll get to it as soon as I can. :)