By Laura
Geggel, Senior Writer | September 10, 2018 04:05pm ET
A pod of
wild dolphins living Down Under can literally walk on water, thanks to some
instruction from "Billie," a wild dolphin who learned the trick while
she was briefly held in captivity, a new study finds.
The feat
highlights how dolphins can
learn incredible skills from one another in the wild, even when those skills
have no known advantage for survival, the researchers said.
However,
this so-called tail walking, which the mammals accomplish by vigorously pumping
their tail underwater so that the rest of their body is elevated above the
water, appears to be a passing fad. Now that Billie and other prominent
tail-walking dolphins have died, other dolphins in the pod aren't doing the
trick as much, the researchers said. [Deep
Divers: A Gallery of Dolphins]
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