Athens [Greece], December 12 : Scientists from the Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute are intrigued by the discovery of a rare dolphin in Greece with a pair of "thumbs," according to the New York Post.
They spotted a dolphin with hook-shaped "thumbs" carved out of its flippers in the Gulf of Corinth, Greece. The dolphin was spotted twice during boat surveys this summer.
Despite being one of 1,300 striped dolphins in the gulf, it was the only one who consistently gave researchers the thumbs up.
"It was the very first time we saw this surprising flipper morphology in 30 years of surveys in the open sea and also in studies while monitoring all the stranded dolphins along the coasts of Greece for 30 years," Alexandros Frantzis, the scientific coordinator and president of the Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute, told LiveScience in an email, according to New York Post.
According to Frantzis, who photographed the aquatic anomaly, the cetacean was "swimming, leaping, bow-riding, and playing" with other dolphins.
While the thumbs of the dolphin are certainly strange, scientists believe they are the result of a genetic aberration caused by constant inbreeding, New York Post reported.
Lisa Noelle Cooper, an associate professor of mammalian anatomy at Northeast Ohio Medical University, agreed, saying, "Given that the defect is in both the left and right flippers, it is probably the result of an altered genetic programme that sculpts the flipper during development as a calf," as per New York Post.
Interestingly, all cetaceans (dolphins, whales, and porpoises) have human-like forearms and "fingers," an evolutionary holdover from when the species was four-legged terrestrial beings.
These marine mitts, on the other hand, are encased in flippers, concealing them like a blubbery glove.
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