Dear Kashmir's Blog World,
My name is Leo, I'm a Spinner Dolphin at Dolphins+. I live with my girlfriends Luna, Nica, Nyla, Samantha, and Zoe, they are spinner dolphins too. How much do you know about spinner dolphins? Well, regardless of your answer I'll tell you everything about spinner dolphins now.
We spinner dolphins get our name from our ability to jump. We are very social animals that like to swim in big groups called schools. Our kind of dolphin has been found in the world's tropical, and non-tropical oceans. We usually get 5'- 7' long, and mostly between 51 – 170 lbs in weight. We don't go into a full state of sleep because we are conscious breathers, that mean we need to think about our breathing, while on one side of our brain sleeps the other side is awake looking for predators. Speaking of predators, our predators include Killer Whales and Humans.
Health Care
Spinner dolphins need special care so I'm going to start by talking about husbandry. Ok, I know what you are thinking "what in the world does husbandry mean". Don't worry I will tell you the definition now.
Husbandry is what health care is called for animals, and I'm the king of it. I have some sicknesses. Asthma (breathing issues) is usually caused by some type of allergic reaction or toxins in the environment. Did you even know dolphins in captivity have been diagnosed with it? I need to take an inhaler for it, just like humans use a handheld inhaler, but I use a giant machine. When I feel it on my back I take a big breath of it. We dolphins also get our teeth brushed with human toothpaste! do you wonder why, well, Unlike sharks, once we lose our teeth we can't grow more teeth.
Dolphin Diet
We dolphins eat Fish and Jell-O. I know what you are thinking "Leo are you making that up", well no I'm not. We dolphins can't drink the water around because it's saltwater, so we get most of our water from our food, but in captivity, we get fresh water into our stomach through a tube. I know that sounds creepy, but it's not bad for us it's very good for us. Anyways back to Jell-O. Jell-O is just water in a hard form? We don't have the flavored Jell-O we have flavorless Jell-O so we don't get sugar but we get water. Our fish are the best of quality. If you are going out to eat fish at a seafood restaurant, we get better quality! It's sorted so we only eat the best fish and Jell-O. we each have three buckets of food every day based on how much food we like to eat. Take a look at our chart for more details:
Tricks & Swimming with Kashmir
Okay, at this point you must be thinking "I like this post but how did you find this blog?" Well, I met with Kashmir when she signed up for the 'Shadow a trainer for half a day' program at Dolphin Plus in Key Largo. During this, she learned about dolphins and what it's like to be a trainer. And even if she thought the water was freezing (although a lot of people say that, on a cold cloudy day) we had fun together in the water.
Some of my favorite tricks are jumping over a pole and pulling people around the lagoon so they can taste the saltwater in their mouths. Haha, it's so funny. Another trick I enjoy is when they ask me to jump something and I don't feel like doing it. I just ignore their request and swim over to talk with my girlfriends. Increasing the suspense, I trick them!
When they least expect it, I jump up and splash them extra saltwater! And finally, my favorite trick is when I swim deep under and then raise and jump out of the water all around the lagoon everyone claps for ME. I feel like a superstar.
Sometimes I get a belly rub and a fish!
I also do non-high energy tricks like saying hello or making the sound impressions of an elephant, chu-chu train, and a few others. Kashmir suggested I learn how to meow like a cat, so maybe I'll try that if someone brings me a meowing cat. Without hearing how something sounds, it's hard for me to make that sound. Did you know that dolphin hearing frequency range is between about 75 Hertz (Hz) to more than 150,000 Hz while adult humans can hear between 20-20,000 Hz?
What's even more amazing is a dolphin's depth perception. How do we see the world? Very differently than humans. Have you ever seen water in the ocean after a storm? Not very clear and sometimes you can't see anything in there because of all the sand being stirred up. Dolphins dive deep and have the ability to hunt and navigate in the depths of the ocean, but we don't have night vision like felines.
So how do we have these amazing powers? We do it using echolocation which is a way we see the world through sound waves. We emit ultrasonic sounds by pushing air through our nasal passages. When the nasal passages open and close they make the tissues around vibrate and make sound waves.
One of our organs on our forehead (the melon) sends the sound waves forward the sound waves travel through the melon and into the water. The clicks bounce off nearby objects and come back to the dolphin and are picked up by the jaw and sent to the, brain. The brain can then turn those into an image allowing us to know the distance, speed, and size of the objects in 3D shapes and even X-rays.
Anyways it's been fun writing this post but the computer might not stand much more water so before I destroy the motherboard I want to thank you for reading this post and make sure you join this blog if you like it. And in the comment box write down what your favorite trick is to see dolphins perform.
P.S I should have gotten a lot of fish for writing this post
P.P.S Raw fish is something me and Kashmir love!
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