The Clearwater Marine Aquarium monitors all dolphins in nearby waters as part of the “Dorsal Fin ID” program.
Researchers have recently discovered a strangely-pigmented bottlenose dolphin.
They’ve called the baby dolphin “Cheurb.” Cherub is only a one-year-old.
Savannah Gandee is part of the research team looking into Cherub’s case. She said they were trying to discover if the baby has albinism but that doesn’t appear to be the case. They are calling Cherub’s coloring “atypical coloration.” She said, “For the first few times we were noticing this animal, those were the opportunistically collected videos that from a cell phone, so now we’re trying to go out there, and if it happened to be nearby while we’re on a tour, we’ve got higher quality cameras to get some more information.”
The good thing is that the baby dolphin seems to be good condition and is behaving normally.
Gandee added, “Dolphins are very similar in the way they learn to humans in that they are not born with basic survival instincts like a snake or a reptile might be. And they have to be with their mother through the first few years of their life in order to one day be on their own.”
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