When I was little, like 3-years-old, I climbed up into my parents' bed one morning and told my mom that "when I was big, I used to swim with dolphins and whales." She must have figured I'd had a weird dream. But a few days went by and I kept telling her the same thing. I kept trying to explain to her that it wasn't a dream or a story, but I just knew I used to be with the dolphins when I was big. I think it started to wig her out. No wonder, I was probably starting to sound like one of those creepy movie kids. But apparently I got over the whole "when I was big" thing and no longer freaked out my mother. Though it obviously stuck with her enough that she asked a psychic about it a few years ago* - who, btw, said that I was channeling a past life (apparently kids are good at that) and that I totally did swim with the whales and dolphins. I'm just sayin...
Anyway...so growing up we took a lot of family vacations to Florida (18 hours in a van, oh the memories). To get to the island, we had to cross this cute toll bridge; my favorite thing about driving over the bridge was looking out for dolphins. And I almost always found at least one. When I was little it seemed like they were there just for me, to welcome me to the island. (Because duh, they totally remembered me from back in the day, obvi.)
I told you that to tell you this: I just read this great article about intelligence and socialization in dolphins. It has some really fun stuff - apparently dolphins totally watch and understand television. Who knew? And they tend to act like "boisterous teenage boys." TV and boys? No wonder I like them!
I especially love this story about a dolphin who I'm pretty sure is smarter than me.
One day, when a gull flew into her pool, she grabbed it, waited for the trainers and then gave it to them. It was a large bird and so the trainers gave her lots of fish. This seemed to give Kelly a new idea. The next time she was fed, instead of eating the last fish, she took it to the bottom of the pool and hid it under the rock where she had been hiding the paper. When no trainers were present, she brought the fish to the surface and used it to lure the gulls, which she would catch to get even more fish. After mastering this lucrative strategy, she taught her calf, who taught other calves, and so gull-baiting has become a hot game among the dolphins.
No real point to this. After a rough few weeks, it was just nice to stumble upon a fun story that reminded me of being a kid again.
*My mom went back to the psychic this year. She said that I'd get married and have love and money. My Magic8 Ball, on the other hand, says "OUTLOOK HAZY"
No comments:
Post a Comment