A team of WDCS researchers got a special Mother’s Day surprise at the weekend when a well-known dolphin was spotted with a new born calf.
Dolphin Baby Boom!
A team of WDCS researchers got a special Mother’s Day surprise at the weekend when a well-known dolphin was spotted with a new born calf.
The dolphin mother, Wave, is part of a group of dolphins living wild in the Port River Estuary, Australia, that have become famous in recent times due to their ability to ‘tail walk’, a behaviour usually only seen in captive dolphins.
The sighting of the new calf brings to 11 the number of babies born since October to this small population of bottlenose dolphins. Before this recent baby boom there had been no newborn dolphins spotted in the river for three years.
All four of the dolphins that feature in the WDCS adoption programme in
Billie is probably the most famous of the dolphin group. At a young age she was taken into captivity for a few weeks before being released back into the Port River Estuary. However, it seems that she learnt the art of ‘tail walking’ from watching her fellow captives performing the trick in return for food, and has since been spotted performing this behaviour in the wild.
And she had also taught some of her friends the technique, and now other dolphins in the group, including Wave, have been photographed ‘tail walking’. Billie’s latest calf is her seventh baby. Four of these calves have died, but two survive and the WDCS researchers are hopeful that this latest edition to the family will thrive.
Mike Bossley of WDCS Australia said: “We’ve been amazed at the number of newborn calves that have been seen in the