{"id":317670,"date":"2026-02-03T07:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T07:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/317670\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T07:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T07:42:07","slug":"dolphin-does-the-sickest-wheelie-off-the-coast-of-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/317670\/","title":{"rendered":"Dolphin Does the Sickest Wheelie Off the Coast of California"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-317282\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-317282\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/dolph-670x388.jpg\" alt=\"Dolpin exhibiting tail walking behavior\" width=\"670\" height=\"388\"  \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-317282\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gotta get that energy out somehow, right? Photo: YouTube\/\/Screenshot<\/p>\n<p>        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/favicon-surf.png\" alt=\"The Inertia\" width=\"30\" height=\"30\" class=\"lazyload\"\/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Most animals<\/strong> \u2014 humans included \u2014 get excited about stuff. Think about a dog with the zoomies, right? Dolphins do too, and recently a boat full of whale watchers off the California coastline saw an incredible example of how a dolphin gets that energy out: by doing a wheelie.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s called \u201ctail walking\u201d and it\u2019s rare to see. This particular species of dolphin, the northern right whale dolphin, is known to be particularly agile.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey are \u2018acrobatic\u2019 swimmers and can leap more than 20 feet over the surface of the water,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fisheries.noaa.gov\/species\/northern-right-whale-dolphin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">wrote NOAA<\/a>. \u201cNorthern right whale dolphins are the only species of dolphin in the North Pacific Ocean without a dorsal fin. At sea, they are sometimes mistaken for herds of fur seals and sea lions due to their dark, streamlined body.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tail walking, as you can see in the video here, is when a dolphin leaps almost all the way out of the water, then moves its tail fast enough to keep it out and walk (that term is used loosely in this context) over the surface of the water.<\/p>\n<p>An interesting fact: you might be a bit confused about the name \u201cnorthern right whale dolphin.\u201d That\u2019s because there is another animal called simply the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theinertia.com\/environment\/right-whale-advocates-seek-to-expand-oceanic-speed-restrictions\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">northern right whale<\/a>, and this is not that. The dolphin is so-named because the northern right whale and the northern right whale dolphin both share an attribute: they lack a dorsal fin.<\/p>\n<p>This footage was shot on January 18, by a guy named Evan Brodsky. \u201cI can\u2019t express to you how uncommonly rare this behavior is,\u201d the tour guide exclaims in the footage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gotta get that energy out somehow, right? Photo: YouTube\/\/Screenshot Most animals \u2014 humans included \u2014 get excited about&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[273],"tags":[4161,18,19,17,154026,133,461],"class_list":["post-317670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-dolphin","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-northern-right-whale-dolphin","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116005577930064714","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}