A Once-Captive Dolphin Has Introduced Her Friends to a Silly Trend
“What we had here was an example of dolphin culture being established.”
by Ed Yong
Sep 05, 2018
3 minutes
In 1995, a bottlenose dolphin named Billie leaped from the water of Port River, Australia, and began “tail-walking” in circles around Mike Bossley’s boat. Her tail was pumping vigorously, her snout was pointed to the sky, and her body was in the air and moving backward. “It was spectacular,” recalls Bossley, a naturalist and conservationist. “But I didn’t appreciate the significance of it until she started doing it again and again.”
Up until that point, a wild bottlenose dolphin had never been seen tail-walking, and for
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