Wholphin: It’s a Fluke of Nature

In some ways, it was a show-biz romance, Hawaiian style.

I’anui Kahei and his girlfriend, Punahele, were the stars of a popular water show for tourists. Unknown to those around them, the two became more than just friends, and Punahele bore I’anui Kahei a baby.

The product of their union--all 400 pounds of her--recently had her second birthday.

Four hundred pounds?

You see, I’anui Kahei is a 14-foot, 2,000-pound false killer whale and Punahele is a demure 6-foot, 400-pound Atlantic bottlenose dolphin.

The result of their mating is a rare hybrid, born in 1985 at Sea Life Park, outside Honolulu.

The park’s staff call the hybrid animal a wholphin and have named it Keikaimalu, which in Hawaiian means From the Peaceful Ocean.

Keikaimalu is the world’s only known wholphin. A similar hybrid offspring was born in 1981 at Sea World in Tokyo, but it survived less than a year.

Ingrid Shallenberger, Sea Life Park’s curator of mammals for 21 years, said that the romantic encounter between whale and dolphin surprised park officials.

She said that dolphins and false killer whales perform during the day and are left unsupervised in the same tank during the romantic, tropical nights.

“It (the cross-mating) was something we had talked about half seriously,” she said. “We didn’t really think it would happen, but we were aware of the possibility.

“When the baby was born, it was very obvious right away to us that that’s what had happened,” she said.

So far, Keikaimalu looks like a whale but acts and swims like a dolphin. Its head resembles the false killer whale’s except that the tip of the snout is rounded, like a dolphin’s. It also has the dolphin’s flipper and dorsal fin configuration.

Keikaimalu already equals the mother in size, so it is difficult for Punahele to produce enough milk and the curators are trying to wean the 2-year-old calf.

In addition to mother’s milk, Keikaimalu eats 15 to 20 pounds of herring and smelt a day.

Shallenberger said officials hope eventually to have father, mother and offspring performing in the park’s water show. She said Keikaimalu could begin training for the show within a year.

For now, Keikaimalu swims with Punahele in a tank with another dolphin and its calf. They are in public view, but visitors are kept 10 feet from the tank.

Many questions remain about the wholphin, Shallenberger said, such as whether it will be able to reproduce, how long it will live and whether it can be trained. Shallenberger said that as the only known animal of its type, Keikaimalu will help park curators write the textbook on the subject.

Shallenberger said there are no plans to produce another such hybrid, and she emphasized that the parents’ mating was a natural, if unusual, occurence.

“I don’t think it’s anyone’s aim to breed whales and dolphins,” she said. “We’d rather have our false killer whale babies and our bottlenose (dolphin) babies.

“But you can’t always decide what these animals are going to do,” she said.