Dolphin Jumps Again with Artificial Fin

Ant writes "This Yahoo! News story mentions Fuji, a mother dolphin that lost 75 percent of her tail due to a mysterious disease, being able to jump again with the help of what is believed to be the world's first artificial fin. The 34-year-old dolphin held at Japan's largest aquarium in the southern island of Okinawa wears the rubber fin for about 20 minutes a day allowing her to jump and to swim at the same speed of other dolphins."

Comments

Dolphins eat rubber?

[xmas2003]

I was confused by this statement in the article - " The breeders decided not to keep Fuji's fin on all day fearing that it may fall off and be eaten or destroyed by other dolphins." - I've read that sharks will eat just about anything, but do dolphins eat rubber?

learning

[Outsider_99]

Does anyone know how the dolphin gets used to using the new fin? If people go through training to use a fake leg, how do dolphins do it?

Re:learning

[Merkuri22]

Remember that an artificial fin is a lot simpler than an artifical leg. When an amputee had a leg, he had an ankle and a knee. Dolphins cannot move their tailfins the way we move our legs. Think of it more like an ear, it's functional but it doesn't move. The part that moves is in her tail, and that part wasn't amputated. The fin only provided extra push (thus why she can still swim with the amputated fin, just slower and with more exertion). I imagine that once she got used to having it on it was very easy to "remember" how to swim.

Re:Feel goodism

[KrancHammer]

Well, its not as if they went out and found a physically challenged wild dolphin, and laughing at Darwin, gave it an artificial fin. This was a captive dolphin that contracted a disease and lost some finnage. That's hardly a natural situation, and I don't think the long-term genetic health of the species will be affected.

Re:Artifical foot?

[danila]

Andrew Lourake is an American jet pilot, who had his leg amputeed in 1998. Now he has a C-Leg and in October 2004 he returned to his job. He works for the federal government carrying government officials, congressmen and the like in the C-20 Gulfstream. During the training his performance during some exercises (saving passengers from a burning plane after a crash, for example) was better than that of two healthy novice pilots training together with him.

Re:Artifical foot?

[CreatureComfort]

In the current Survivor:Vanuatu one of the contestants has an artificial lower leg. He is one of the best competitors in the physical challenges. The only test that he seems to have a bit more trouble than the others in is walking a narrow balance beam. He was voted off last night after 29(?) days and making it to the final 8.

Depending on whether you believe they actually live in that shelter on the beach for 39 days when the cameras aren't turned on or not, his leg doesn't seem to be having any trouble with the salt water, sand, dirt, etc. I'm actually very interested in seeing some interviews with him after the show ends on some of the particular problems he faced with it.

Re:Over-rated Cetaceans

[Anne Honime]

If dolphins are that smart, why haven't they built cities? Or vehicles? Where is their historical record, their literature?

Dolphins are vastly superior to human beings : they don't need to have cities nor vehicules ; they're fit to their environement far better than we are to ours. They're actually among the fastest creatures in the water. Our best boats are just close to their top speed, after 15.000 years of so-called "scientific evolution". They don't need to work to buy food : they can grab a snack whenever they want, wherever they want. Try to catch a rabbit on your own ! They're smarter than humans : no dolphin would attack one of its sibblings. So they can spend an entire laid-back life, probably telling themselves fun stories about us, forever enslaved and fighting hostile conditions.

But there is more : being a dolphin, you would have a lifelong erection, and not having to go to the old trick of "- Here is your aspirin darling ! - What for, I've got no headeache ? - Fine, let's shag!" to have sexual relationships.

If I were on metempsychosis, I would DIE to reincarnate into a dolphin.

Re:You got it wrong

[horrens]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_subculture#W elcoming_Our_New_Overlords

Re:Artifical foot?

[Poltras]

I realize this. I understand a certain extent of this: what you describe is not a branching tree, it's a graph of cooperation between researchers and centers.

Problem is, to me, that most of the time people base their research subject on how much it can brings in terms of money/entertainment, instead of what improvement it can brings to our lives/evolution.

I understand your frustation, but what I wanted to point out is that, mysteriouly, a slashdot post about a dolphin was on first page, but there is rarely an update about human research topic. Not that I don't care about the dolphin, but we should give more importance to what concerns us, somehow.

not sure if my point is clear :P Gotta sleep. Or more coffee.

Re:Feel goodism

[Joe Tie.]

Thank you - well said! The same misinterpretation of the meaning of natural selection always seems to come up in these kinds of discussions. The perfect example I can think of are dogs. Many of their original behavoirs and appearences would have been detrimental to them while living with humans, and in their new environment these have been selected against. Being smaller, less aggresive on average, or more able to communicate with humans might not help, or even activly hurt them in the wild - but the breeds in question don't live in the wild anymore. I think humans get a bit overly arogent about exactly how much global effect we have over natural proceesses.