From jumping through hoops for hundreds of cheering people at marine parks to having their own television show, dolphins have been entertaining us for decades.

Photo by: Joyce Belloise

NATURAL BORN PERFORMER
Dolphins are natural born performers with acrobatic jumps and play as part of their everyday lives in the wild. With positive reinforcement such as food, rubdowns and toys, dolphins are trained to do complex choreographed acrobatic shows for audiences around the world. Many of these spectacular shows can be seen in marine parks like SeaWorld or the Miami Sequarium.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!
Along with doing tricks for tourists dolphins have also had success on the screen. Probably the most famous dolphin of them all was Flipper. This “faster than lighting” character captured audiences for three seasons during the 1960’s show of the same name. The adventures of this dolphin with his two best human friends, Sandy and Bud, were the focal point of the show. Flipper was actually played by two dolphins, one was a female dolphin by the name of Mitzi. She did all of Flipper’s stunts including nudging of wayward boats, knocking pistols out of poacher’s hands and pretty much everything seen on the show. The second dolphin was a male named Mr. Gripper who was only brought in to do the famous tail walk.

Dolphins are such a beloved animal in our culture that everywhere you look there is some type of reference to these creatures. For instance in the science fiction book The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, dolphins are portrayed as the third most intelligent creatures on earth. Their acrobatic tricks are misinterpreted as play, but are actually warnings to humans of the impending destruction of earth. They can also be found in Greek mythology as helpers of humankind.

Resources for this article provided by wikipedia.org