Dolphins are more than just creatures that look like they're perpetually smiling. They are basically our mammalian cousins, sharing much of the same genes as us, just with some chromosomal changes.

In 2013, India became the first country to give a dolphin rights as "non-human persons". You may be thinking: "Why the heck would a country give an animal it's own set of rights as a person?" Well, according to Wikipedia, "A person is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility."

Dolphins exhibit these traits, by showing that they have self-consciousness. If you put a dolphin in front of a mirror, unlike your cat or dog who may be confused at what they're seeing, research shows that dolphins will know they're looking at themselves. They will even notice changes in their appearance. Dolphins have also been known to have different sexual identities, just as humans do. Dolphins also have "names" or distinct ecolocation calls for each dolphin in their pod. There are even different "accents" depending on location, which dolphins can learn, just as humans learn other languages!

All of this is just to say that studying dolphins is important. Our project studying dorsal fins can help us learn how to protect these amazing creatures with laws by learning more about their behavior and where they reside. It can also help spark research on dolphins in unlikely areas, like New York!