Injured dolphin may get prosthetic tail

[{DSG}DarkRaven]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science....ap/index.html

CLEARWATER, Florida (AP) -- The news from Indian River Lagoon was too familiar: another dolphin gravely injured because of human action.

But marine scientist Steve McCulloch immediately saw this rescue was unique. The baby bottlenose dolphin lost her tail, but perhaps her life could be saved.

McCulloch, director of dolphin and whale research at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, decided to channel his anger into a solution.

The solution for the dolphin -- dubbed Winter -- may be a prosthetic tail. If the logistics can be worked out, Winter's prosthesis would be the first for a dolphin who lost its tail and the key joint that allows it to move in powerful up-and-down strokes.

"There's never been a dolphin like her," said Dana Zucker, chief operating officer of the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, which is now Winter's home.

A dolphin in Japan has a prosthesis, the first in the world, to replace a missing part of its tail.

Winter was a frail, dehydrated 3-month-old when she came to the animal rescue center in December. A fisherman found her tangled in the buoy line of a crab trap in Indian River Lagoon near Cape Canaveral. The line tightened around her tail as she tried to swim away, strangling the blood supply to her tail flukes.

"It looked like paper," Zucker said of Winter's tail. "Bit by bit over the weeks it just fell off."

Winter was left with a rounded stump.

The rest of the article is available through the link. Interesting, don't you think? Though sort of a waste, in a long term sort of way, considering that the dolphin still won't be able to ever leave the aquarium even if the new tail works.

[Mitsukara]

Wow. That's pretty cool, actually :) There's certainly worse ways to spend that kind of money/resources, and I can imagine that pioneering this kind of technology could have some future uses, if not by the mechanism itself, then by the information and experience learned in the attempt.

It'll be interesting to see how this goes, I think. If they succeed, that'd be pretty cool.

[ZTC]

It's better then not having a tail, I'm sure...
I hope they succeede with the prosthetic

[Modus Ponens]

Yeah, this is something I can get behind. PETA being against the cockroach-eating thing, and the four-legged chicken, I just don't care too much about, because cockroaches and chickens are stupid. (Well, certainly cockroaches, anyway.) But a dolphin is worth saving.

[ShadowTiger]

... particularly if the dolphin is loved and adored by children through out the area. If you come across a large injured creature in the middle of the ocean/wilds, you're less likely to take it upon yourself to heal the poor being than to attempt to heal a cash cow.