Strange sea creature is a hybrid of dolphin and melon-headed whale – but please don’t call it a ‘wholphin’

Scientists are touting the first sighting of a hybrid between a melon-headed whale and a rough-toothed dolphin in the ocean off Hawaii. But don’t call it a “wholphin,” they say.

The melon-headed whale is one of the various species that’s called a whale but is technically a dolphin.

“Calling it something like a wholphin doesn’t make any sense,” said one of the study’s authors, Robin Baird, a Hawaii research biologist with Washington state-based Cascadia Research Collective. “I think calling it a wholphin just confuses the situation more than it already is.”

In a study published last week, scientists say the animal spotted off the island of Kauai in August 2017 appears to be the first record of a hybrid involving either species. It’s also only the third confirmed instance of a wild-born hybrid between species in the Delphinidae family.

The label “wholphin” has stuck for a hybrid of a false killer whale and an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin born in 1985 at Hawaii’s Sea Life Park. The hybrid named Kekaimalu still lives at the marine mammal park, where she helps teach children about genetics.

News of the hybrid spotted in the wild last year during Navy-funded research on the effects of sonar proves the “genetic diversity of the ocean,” Sea Life Park curator Jeff Pawloski said.