How do zoos feed their hungry dolphins?

What do you feed an acrobat who leaps, dances, spins, squeaks, and weighs 500 pounds? A whole salmon, of course! Assuming your agile athlete is a dolphin. But feeding these graceful creatures isn’t just about tossing them fishy treats, it’s about carefully crafted nutrition. Jennifer Watts: So a typical dolphin would eat up probably about 20 pounds of fish a day, but it ranges anywhere from about 15 to 25 depending on the size of the dolphin. And one major part of dolphin care and nutrition is deciding what’s on the menu. For dolphins, this means a lot of fish. Jennifer: We decided many years ago to try to work with the Sarasota Dolphin Program. It is the longest running research program on wild dolphins in the country. We've been following that group of dolphins in Sarasota Bay for about 50 years. So we have a lot of information on what the animals naturally eat. So we made a decision a number of years ago to try to incorporate as many fish from the Gulf of Mexico as we could. Because the availability of wild fish fluctuates, variety is critical. Jennifer: If our animals are used to eating only one or two types of fish, if that fish were to go away, then some of our animals, because they have different personalities and different tastes, will say, no, thank you, I don't want to eat anything else other than the herring. So we have to make sure that they are naturally used to eating many different species of fish. Brookfield Zoo currently cares for seven dolphins. One of them, Allie, is pregnant, which brings special nutritional needs. Jennifer: Hydration is very important for the mother and calf because she has to be able to produce milk. Jennifer: Just like we can't drink salt water, marine mammals can't drink salt water. So they get the water that they need from the fish that they eat. Well, the fish that we purchase for our animals sometimes only gets caught once a year. So it can sit in a freezer for up to a year before it gets fed out. So one of the things we do to offset that is we've all taught our animals to take ice cubes and gelatin. Sometimes it's even fun because we can color it and make little cakes and things like that for special occasions. It’s hydration and enrichment. In the wild, dolphins display creativity of their own with their feeding techniques. Jennifer: One of the behaviors we see in Sarasota is what we call fish whacking, which is where they take a fish and they hit it with their fluke to stun it. And then as the fish flies out of the air, they are able to catch it and eat it without as much hard work as trying to chase it. Someone please invite me to the next dolphin party. I heard there might be jiggly cake and fishy pinatas.