Some may have figured this out, but yesterday's penguin post is a joke. It was April Fool's. I got several emails saying "OMG FLYING PENGUINS REALLY?? NO WAY!" And you would've been right. No way.
I don't want to actually mislead you. So to you, fools, Happy April.
I was planning on posting a marine mammal of some sort today anyway, and happened to read an article about these this morning. Every now and again, we get good news about animals in the conservation world - instead of finding things are going endangered and more likely extinct. This is one of them. Until Tuesday, it was thought that there were no more than in the range of the low hundreds. But the Wildlife Conservation Society just found about 6,000 of them in the Bay of Bengal! WOO!
So still low in numbers, this is obviously very exciting that we underestimated things. It happened with Gorillas last fall, too. Shows you how little we know about our world, which is exciting.
In other news, about these guys. As far as it is known, they are just in the Bay of Bengal / Myanmar area. They are closely related to Orcas (Killer Whales). Another fun fact: They are known to apparently help fishermen in the area out -- since it's largely smalltime local fishermen, that might be good news. Since they travel in pods, they round up schools of fish and make it easier for fishermen to fish while the bait given by fishermen also attracts the dolphins to come eat there because of the higher density of fish to begin with. It's a win-win-lose, for the dolphins and the fishermen: win. At least for the time being. The fish: they lose.
My favorite part about this picture was the fact that it came with a caption that said:
"Not considered and acrobatic animal." At least it tries.
The only thing better than finding more of these is the fact that they are awkward. Nice.
This is the best photo I could find. Considering there aren't a lot of sightings of them, you'll have to deal with it.
Photo by Alice Rocco
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