Reese Raspberries

Reese loves to observe his environment.

 

As a baby dolphin, Reese explores his surroundings. This not only includes his other lagoon mates and the critters in the water, but also his trainers. Every trainer has a unique relationship with the dolphins and brings something new to the table. Recently one of the trainers, Christina, brought out Reese’s silly side.

At the end of a session, Christina stuck her head in the water and blew bubbles. This was a brand new experience for little Reese and at first he wasn’t quite sure what to do. He stared at her for a bit and seemed to be interested but didn’t know how to react himself.

Later on in the day, Christina tried it again. Once more, she stuck her head in the water and blew raspberries at the little guy. Reese, again, was interested and this time got closer to her face. She looked at her from side to side and then stuck his face in the bubbles. All of a sudden a switch went off in Reese’s head. He backed up and imitated her.

After the exposure to raspberries, Reese went bubble crazy. He started to make huge bubble trains and learned how to make the raspberry noise outside of the water. He loves to blow bubbles underneath the water then come up and raspberry at the trainers.

Dolphins learn through imitation of their mothers and peers so now that Reese is raspberrying on his own, the trainers give him the signal every time he does it. We hope that he begins to associate the signal with the raspberry.