Mistaken Identity…
Our fundamental knowledge about the wonderful Bottlenose dolphins in the Moray Firth/East Coast of Scotland and especially those individuals in the WDC Adopt a Dolphin programme comes from the ability to be able to identify individuals within the population – the dorsal fin on the dolphins back being the biggest and easiest part of a dolphin to readily photograph as you can see in the photo below. The dark adult alongside the young, lighter coloured dolphin has some notches out of the rear edge of the dorsal fin and some scratches as well – all these marks and notches are made by interacting with each other and makes each dolphins dorsal fin totally unique. I was showing the photo below to some visitors recently and one person remarked on the “Mum and Baby” photo and I had to explain that just because a young dolphin has an adult beside it – that doesn’t neccessarily mean that the adult is its Mum…
The adult next to young ID#1198 isn’t actually Mum (Zephyr) at all, but is in fact ID#105 “Sundance”, one of the big powerful male dolphins and possibly even this youngsters father, so, appearances can be deceptive sometimes…
