Bottlenose dolphine adopts common dolphin | NZ Herald

Stashing for personal reference, as my original BBC source appears to have vanished. A 2014 news story from Paihia, New Zealand, about a female bottlenose dolphin that adopted a stray common dolphin calf (given the nickname Pee-Wee). It made international news as an incredibly rare documented instance of cross-species adoption, but it hit my radar because we were there when the discovery was made (or, technically, just after). We were just days into our time in New Zealand and went out on a boat trip to see the famous Hole in the Rock with Fullers GreatSights, which included some dolphin spotting. The first pod we found were a group of half a dozen bottlenoses with a calf, which was cool, but our guide kept scanning back and forth over the calf until she confirmed that it was Pee-Wee. The same company had been the ones who had realised what had happened a couple of days earlier and it was on our trip that they felt the adoption was confirmed, with the calf still with her adopted mother after a few days. Pretty cool stuff and, yes, I do have a photo of Pee-Wee – or at least its dorsal fin!