Today was our first day with the DOLPHINS! The first thing we did was hop into the water for a chance to meet our new friends. Tori and I were in a group with the dolphin Aleta who was 31 and her two-year-old daughter Diva. We were able to do handshakes, got to rub their back and even do some commands. My favorite was when I got to have a splash war with Aleta, Tori’s favorite was Aleta’s giggle behavior where the dolphin imitated a person’s laughter. The young dolphin Diva was still learning some of the behaviors. It was really cute to see her try her best to imitate her mom and perform behaviors requested by the trainer.
After we met the dolphins we attended seminars on maternity, physiology and echolocation. We learned about dolphin parents and how the mother plays a large role, whereas the father doesn’t really. It was also surprising to learn that dolphin mothers often rely on their close friends to help nanny their children. This system is called alloparenting. The echolocation portion was surprising as we learned that dolphins actually use their teeth to help with echolocation. They have evenly spaced teeth, which can sense vibrations and can help them use only hearing to “see” their surroundings.
At the end of the day we were able to observe a medical demonstration. We saw how the trainers make behaviors necessary for them to draw blood or other biological samples into a game so the dolphins are not stressed and feel comfortable. We all cheered and encouraged them a lot for all their medical behaviors in order to reinforce their actions. These behaviors have to be very precise and are very important so dolphins and trainers get very excited when they are performed correctly.
We have been working hard to learn the names of the different dolphins and to do so we rely on differences in the dolphins’ fins and tails for the most part. There are some other differences too though such as Luna’s birth mark or Jax’s scars from a shark attack. At the end of the day we said good night to all of the dolphins at each of their lagoons. They like people so they will come over and look up at you from the water and let you say a nice good night to them.
By: Trevor Sands and Tori Hymel