Back in April, officials at Sea Life Park in Hawaii announced the birth of a brand-new baby wolphin.
Back in April, officials at Sea Life Park in Hawaii announced the birth of a brand-new baby wolphin (APNews, April 23, 2005). A what? A wolphin —a cross between a whale and a dolphin. The playful female calf is one-fourth false killer whale and three-fourths Atlantic bottlenose dolphin.
Her father is an Atlantic bottlenose named Mikioi who, despite his brief romantic encounter, "seems to be totally oblivious to this happening," according to the park's general manager, Dr. Renato Lenzi. Mikioi shares a tank at the park with the mother, a wolphin named Kekaimalu.
Usually, hybrid animals are sterile and cannot produce young. A mule, for example, which is a cross between a horse and a donkey, is typically sterile but on rare occasions one will turn out fertile.
Actually, according to the online Wikipedia , "the False Killer Whale (Pseudorca crassidens) is . . . one of the larger members of the oceanic dolphin family (Delphinidae)."
These rare dolphins are the only known wolphins in captivity. Kekaimalu has had two previous offspring; one lived only a few days, the other lived nine years and never reproduced (Kekaimalu is 19 years old). So while some see evidence for evolutionary development in this unusual pairing, others see proof of the strict genetic checks and balances God ordained at creation.
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