Gotta get that energy out somehow, right? Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Most animals — humans included — get excited about stuff. Think about a dog with the zoomies, right? Dolphins do too, and recently a boat full of whale watchers off the California coastline saw an incredible example of how a dolphin gets that energy out: by doing a wheelie.
It’s called “tail walking” and it’s rare to see. This particular species of dolphin, the northern right whale dolphin, is known to be particularly agile.
“They are ‘acrobatic’ swimmers and can leap more than 20 feet over the surface of the water,” wrote NOAA. “Northern right whale dolphins are the only species of dolphin in the North Pacific Ocean without a dorsal fin. At sea, they are sometimes mistaken for herds of fur seals and sea lions due to their dark, streamlined body.”
Tail walking, as you can see in the video here, is when a dolphin leaps almost all the way out of the water, then moves its tail fast enough to keep it out and walk (that term is used loosely in this context) over the surface of the water.
An interesting fact: you might be a bit confused about the name “northern right whale dolphin.” That’s because there is another animal called simply the northern right whale, and this is not that. The dolphin is so-named because the northern right whale and the northern right whale dolphin both share an attribute: they lack a dorsal fin.
This footage was shot on January 18, by a guy named Evan Brodsky. “I can’t express to you how uncommonly rare this behavior is,” the tour guide exclaims in the footage.
