Definitely not a vacation
January 16th, 2008 by admin
The temperature didn’t make it above 20°F on Monday in Minnesota. It was not a day during which most Floridians would enjoy traveling. But imagine if you were a dolphin!
On Monday, two female Atlantic bottlenose dolphins arrived at the Minnesota Zoo, after a long trip from Dolphin Connection, a marine park in the Florida Keys.
The purpose of the trip? The Minnesota Zoo is hoping that the dolphins will breed with its male dolphin.
Bottlenose dolphins are not endangered. The breeding program is merely to re-stock the zoo with popular, crowd-pleasing animals. Zoos regularly transfer animals between facilities, often with little regard to the welfare of the animal.
The two Florida dolphins will join the Minnesota Zoo’s two remaining dolphins. In 2006, three dolphins died at the zoo, including a 7-month-old who fractured his skull after jumping out of the tank and landing on a concrete deck during a training exercise (six weeks later his mother also died).