Courtesy of Marianna Boorman, Port River, Adelaide, Australia.

Many open water swimmers have enjoyed being Walkerized during their ocean swims. We wonder if any channel swimmers might be moonwalked in the future instead?

In Australia, marine researchers saw wild dolphins perform tail walking, a learned behavior known worldwide in sea parks and aquarium.

Like young homo sapiens mimicking each other with unique skateboard tricks on dryland, the unnatural act became a fad among Australian dolphin in the wild in southern Australia where researchers observed other dolphins rising vertically out of the water and kicking strongly with their fins to move backwards (known as tail walking) in a sort of Michael Jackson-styled ocean moonwalk.

A dolphin named Billie turned out to be the leader of the trend among the dolphin crowd.

So like young homo sapiens who copy each other’s movements and behaviors apparently so too do dolphins.

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