After waking up on the wrong 😑 side of the bed and feeling cranky this past Sunday morning, I needed a little pick me up before heading out to church. Squeezing in an episode of Mutual Of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom before heading off to Sunday services helped get the day off to a better start! There’s certain things about animals I forget somehow, and from watching this episode it reminded me that like whales, manatees, and seals, the dolphins, and porpoises are among the few species of sea creatures that are warm blooded mammals like us. This condition necessitates them returning regularly to the surface for air which makes me wonder how they evolved differently from most other marine life.
It seems to me this would be rather tiring – all that back and forth between plunging below the surface and returning for air again. I can scarcely imagine having to live like that, but then again, there are so many mysteries about life in its many forms that still elude us and probably always will. Another outstanding aspect of dolphins is their high rate of intelligence relative to other animal species, especially regarding their ability to learn new things and apply them actively towards problem solving. Scientists also believe dolphins are self-aware like humans and can even mimic some human behaviors.
The most enjoyable part of this Wild Kingdom episode though, was watching them play games like balancing basketballs on their noses and hurling them into hoops, jumping, back flips, standing out of water and swimming backwards which show what quick studies they are. Even more amazing was watching dolphins play water polo, jumping through fire hoops, and pulling a dog on a surfboard around the pool . However, despite how fun-loving and docile dolphins can appear, they have a great deal of strength and resist mightily against capture by humans as the episode clearly illustrates!
The Wild Kingdom episode traveled to various venues around the world featuring dolphins performing various games and stunts in Miami, Los Angeles, Hawaii, Australia, and South Africa. Being self-aware they really appear to enjoy being “star performers” especially if they will be rewarded with kettles of fish! While watching this episode it triggered something in memory I hadn’t thought of in quite a few years. Watching these wonderful, joyous creatures made me think back to the family adventure film Flipper (1963) in which a 12-year-old boy living in the Florida Keys befriends an injured dolphin forming a strong bond between them.
I thought this would be a nice tie-in with the Wild Kingdom episode and now I want to watch Flipper again because it’s been over ten years since I last saw it. There was also a follow-up tv series of the same name which ran for three seasons and 88 episodes from 1964-1967. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any of those and will look into posting about this version of Flipper for my Classic TV Episodes category later on. For some more trivia, there was also a 1957 movie called Boy On A Dolphin about a sponge diver (Sophia Loren) who finds a priceless, ancient Greek statue of a boy riding a dolphin at the bottom of the Aegean Sea. Naturally, conflict arises when archaeologists and artifact dealers are all clamoring to get it from her.
Boy On A Dolphin is another movie I haven’t seen, but it sounds exciting, so that needs to be explored too. In any case, it seems that as researchers began to learn more about dolphins 🐬 and their marine habitat they were becoming very popular in entertainment media beginning in the 1950s and 60s — with 1963 as the especially outstanding year!
