PARTY TRICK: Dolphins are trained to tail walk in captivity. But until recently, it was very rare to see the behavior in wild animals.
MIKE BOSSLEY
Billie the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin liked to walk on water. She’d pump her tail vigorously back and forth, forcing her entire body out of the water, so she’d skim backwards along the surface as if she were moonwalking.
Mike Bossley, a researcher at the wildlife charity Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), was the first to observe Billie performing the trick; he caught her doing it in the bays and estuaries around Adelaide, Australia, in the 1990s and early 2000s. At the time, it was common to see trained dolphins tail walk in marine parks. But Billie was wild.
“Tail walking in wild dolphins is indeed rare,” says Janet Mann, a biologist at Georgetown University who studies dolphin behavior. “I have seen it only once in ...
