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“What we had here was an example of dolphin culture being established.”

In 1995, a bottlenose dolphin named Billie leaped from the water of Port River, Australia, and began “tail-walking” in circles around Mike Bossley’s boat. Her tail was pumping vigorously, her snout was pointed to the sky, and her body was in the air and moving backward. “It was spectacular,” recalls Bossley, a naturalist and conservationist. “But I didn’t appreciate the significance of it until she started doing it again and again.”

Up until that point, a wild bottlenose dolphin had never been seen tail-walking, and for good reason: It’s a trick that’s taught to dolphins in captivity. Bossley soon realized that Billie had not only learned the trick during a brief stint in dolphin rehab, but that she had then passed it on to her wild peers. “What we had here was an example of dolphin culture being established,” he says. “I got very excited and focused on documenting it.”

Billie had first come to national attention years earlier. In 1987, a racehorse trainer regularly took his horses for a swim in Port River, towing them behind his small boat. The trainer noticed that every morning, a young dolphin would swim alongside them. He named the dolphin Billy—a spelling that would later need to be tweaked when Bossley realized that she was actually female.

That December, Billie followed a regatta of sailing ships out of Port River and ended up trapped in a particularly polluted harbor. A nearby dolphinarium called Marineland rescued her and kept her at its facility for three weeks. There, she lived alongside five captive dolphins that had been trained to tail-walk in public shows. Billie never received any training, but she didn’t need it. She learned to tail-walk just by watching them.

That became clear after she was released back to Port River. She tail-walked around Bossley’s boat. She tail-walked in the bow of ships—the only dolphin ever known to do so. Then, in 2007, Bossley and his team of volunteer observers saw another female, called Wave, perform the trick. Her proficiency grew as Billie’s health started to falter. And after Billie died of kidney failure in 2009, “Wave’s tail-walking exploded, and she started doing it all the time,” says Luke Rendell from the University of St. Andrews. “The sheer number of times she did it was probably the influence that got other dolphins to do it, too.”

Indeed, Wave’s daughter Ripple also picked it up, as did four other adult females in the group, and four other juveniles. Some still do it, but the fad is fading; it peaked in 2011, and has declined since then.

No one really knows why Billie learned to tail-walk from the captive dolphins, or why her wild peers learned it from her. Many animals have been seen imitating one another’s actions, but most of these examples of wild culture involve techniques for getting food or attracting mates. Tail-walking seems to carry no benefit. There are only a few examples of such apparently arbitrary traditions, including orcas that started carrying dead salmon for a few weeks, macaque monkeys that began playing with stones, and capuchin monkeys that poke one another in the eye as a greeting.

Bossley says that tail-walking is unlikely to be a straightforwardly playful behavior: When one of her calves died, Wave could be seen tail-walking beside its body. It’s probably not just a call for attention either, since the dolphins do it when alone.

“We know that dolphins are social learners,” says Diana Reiss, a dolphin expert at Hunter College. “There have been past reports of captive cetaceans imitating the behavior and vocalizations of other dolphins, and even other species, with which they are housed. In doing so, perhaps they’re trying to fit in or bond with the others.”

Rendell agrees with that idea, and notes that humans do something similar. “Human children copy irrelevant actions as part of belonging,” he says. “It’s the Salesman 101 technique: Just copy the person you want to sell to and they feel warmed toward you.”

But why is it that only adult females learned to tail-walk, and adult males never did? “I have absolutely no idea,” Rendell says. “The only males seen to do it were calves swimming with their mothers. I can only speculate that copying someone is such a strong social signal for a male bottlenose to give that they’ll only do it in very strong circumstances.”

Focus on your training session

Environments affect behaviour, predict your animal’s behaviour, keep your eyes scanning around while working with you and be aware that another animals’ behaviour affects your animal behaviour. If there is anybody or an even an object around, that your animal is not comfortable with, try to take them to another area or environment where they are more relaxed. As with children, once your animal has realized that you are always protecting them, then they will trust you.

Communication skills are paramount; during your sessions, your animal’s behaviour depends on the quality of the communication you have with your animal and with other trainers and how aware you are of your surroundings. Anticipation and planning ahead is very important when handling your animal. Dolphins love doing different things, they are very cheeky, they also get bored quickly with the same thing over and over, but when they are learning something new, they are usually concentrated, curious and excited for what may come next. Some behaviours take time and concentration. Take as an example, husbandry behaviours (medical behaviours) these are examples where a high level of concentration from your animal will be required and they also need to be very relaxed.

Before you start training any behaviour, you must communicate with other trainers and let them know how long you are going to take and where the training is going to take place. State the starting time and ending time, before you end, you need to make eye contact with other trainers and let the animals go at the same time, so your animal does not go and interrupt any other trainer’s session. This is the best way of getting the best discipline, instilling good habits in your animals that results in a good quality training session and a positive outcome for all.

Enjoy your quality time with your animal!!

In most Dolphinariums, when you first start working, you do not handle an animal until you have acquired certain training techniques in theory. To touch an animal, before you have acquired this knowledge, could be counter-productive to your development as a trainer. When stating a job as a trainer, companies should give you the time, to catch up with theoretical knowledge, which is 70% of marine mammal training.

For many years I have being training dolphin trainers, in fact I trained my first student in year 1993. In 2001 I was in Dolphinarium management and one of my responsibilities was to create an educational department. I hired assistant trainers, assessed a swimming test and created material to help beginners become trainers. One of the most important tasks is to constantly improve the trainer’s knowledge.

I thought that it would be a great idea to create a system for beginners and staff new to training, which would be more effective and efficient. As I explained before, animals should not be involved at this first stage and my system helps prepare staff physically, mentally and theoretically before they get to handle the animals. It is important to take this opportunity, without the animal present, so the trainee can firstly learn plenty of technical work that is not so easy to learn, whilst having the animal in front of them. Often in Dolphinariums many trainers never learn the most important technicalities or do not get full training at all, because they are not given this opportunity at the start and other factors such as the insecurity of their teachers.

Learning to distinguish what is relevant when observing an animal’s behaviour and its environment, is paramount and this needs to be learnt before touching a dolphin. Giving an animal to a student, in most cases, confuses the animal in many ways.  This can also deteriorate behaviours and in time, these can become difficult to correct and may require the behaviour to be taken back at criteria again. Whilst training a trainer, you will repeat your explanation of a technique over and over, until the assistant understands the right technique to use. This then confuses the dolphin. After an animal has been used for trainee training purposes, an experienced trainer must then work with that animal to make sure they are not confused.  Thanks to the experience, patience, love and care of professional behaviourists, every behaviour can go back to normal, but it does take time and a great amount of effort and required knowledge.

Usually when a new assistant is learning to work with an animal, they cannot get to see the chosen behaviour they are working on, because the animal does it too fast or because of the position of the behaviour. Most often though, it is because of a lack of attention to detail from the new trainee and who does not understand what the expected criteria or goal is.

In a hands-on training session, whilst I was teaching an assistant, I realised the need for a more accurate system when teaching assistants. I saw the need for a system where the trainee has an idea of what is expected before touching the animal. With this new system, we protect the animal by not using them repeatedly or confusing them. By the time we reach hands on sessions, the student can observe what went wrong and see the animals unwanted behaviour, without running out of time. Trainers will then have a reaction time, anticipating the behaviour that they would not have time do spot if they did not learn about it in theory before getting to the hands-on training.

For all the benefits I have explained above, I have created my “Step by step Behaviour Training Program”

After studying this new program, students will be fully prepared and aware of their role before the hands-on training begins.  They will be ahead of the game and in an advantaged position. The benefit for the trainer is clear, but don’t forget the benefit to the Dolphinarium also, in not having to spend time correcting behaviours of dolphins used repeatedly in training scenarios. A dolphin that is not confused is a happy dolphin and happy dolphins are less stressed and healthy, reducing vets bills and increasing productivity. Lastly and most importantly, the system assists in the well being generally of the dolphins which must be everyone’s primary goal.

I can also explain easier the confusing Operant Conditioning techniques with examples videos.

I believe in offering the best quality training material and provide the best opportunity for my students become successful trainers.

Here are just a few of my former students who are now enjoying a successful training career around the world.

I am immensely proud of all my former students!