A rare defect was spotted on a dolphin in the Gulf of Corinth, Greece back in July 2023. The dolphin appears to have “thumbs” reflecting a genetic or developmental error.
Lisa Noelle Cooper, an associate professor of mammalian anatomy and neurobiology at the Northeast Ohio Medical University, agreed that the dolphin’s defect is likely rooted in its genes. “Given that the defect is in both the left and right flippers, it is probably the result of an altered genetic program that sculpts the flipper during development as a calf.” Unlike in humans, whose fingers are fused into paddle-shaped hands in the womb with cells that die off before we are born, cells accumulate around dolphins’ forelimb bones to form flippers, Cooper said. “Normally, dolphins develop their fingers within the flipper and no cells between the fingers die off,” she said. But [this] dolphin appears to be missing fingers and some of the tissue that would usually encase them. “It looks to me like the cells that normally would have formed the equivalent of our index and middle fingers died off in a strange event when the flipper was forming while the calf was still in the womb,” Cooper said.
https://www.livescience.com/animals/dolphins/extremely-rare-dolphin-with-thumbs-photographed-in-greek-gulf
Given their “frisky” antics, significant intellect, and newfound thumbs, it’s safe to say that mischief is definitely on the horizon.
