Dolphins...Dolphins...Dolphins!!!

Hey everyone!
So sorry it has been awhile since my last blog entry! This past week has been such a whirlwind since I moved down to Indianapolis (aka Indy) and started the internship. I officially moved down here on Sunday, September 12th into the house that I live in in the Irvington neighborhood (about seven miles away from downtown) and I started on monday! :)
Since there has already been so much that I have learned within four days' time, I thought I would write different posts involving various aspects of the internship just so that everyone would have a better idea of what it is like in the day of a marine mammal trainer!
Therefore...I will start with the actual animals themselves and the different ones I am starting to work with personally.
There are seven Atlantic Bottlenose dolphins housed at the Indianapolis Zoo; five females and two males. The names of the females are Ripley, Indy, China, Nova and Kahlei. The names of the males are Kimo and Jett. The reason why they are called bottlenose dolphins is because their mouth and nose (or the rostrum) is shaped like a bottle! :)
Kimo is the dominant male in the pod (or group) and Nova is the dominant female. This means that these  two dolphins, in a sense, rule the roost...or pool I should say!
China, Ripley, Nova and Kimo are the oldest dolphins in the pod and their ages range from the early to mid twenties (dolphins can live to be up to twenty five to thirty years of age!) while Kahlei, Indy and Jett are the youngest dolphins in the pod. Jett's mother is Ripley and Indy's mother is China. So far, two of my favorite dolphins have been Kahlei and Indy. Indy is lighter in color than most of the other dolphins and has a characteristic "underbite" of her nose and mouth which she inherited from her mother (China has the same thing on her nose and mouth or rostrum too!) Kahlei, which means "beloved" in Hawaiian is more large and robust in size. It is easy to tell her apart from the other dolphins due to a "notch" that she has on the front of her dorsal, or top, fin when she swims around in the pool. Both of these beautiful girls are very playful. Whenever we come in in the morning for the first feed of the day, they always pop their heads up on the side of the pool to see what we are doing. Kahlei is always hungry for attention, loves to play and show off for her trainers! Indy is also super curious and never misses a chance to see what's going on!
The more time I spend with these amazing animals, the more I appreciate their beauty, personality, power, strength, stamina and grace!