.

Bubbles the pilot whale has been a favorite of audiences for a long time and I remember her from the days when I worked at Marineland.

In fact, she was recently discussed by former Marineland employees who are gearing up for a reunion in September at the old location of the now defunct marine park.

People have mixed feelings about marine parks and captive marine mammals but I can tell you that in my lifetime I’ve seen people change from not being interested in these animals to being enthralled by them.

In some cases this is a good thing but in other cases the close exposure to marine mammals in captivity and the media driven snippets has caused a false impression of who and what marine mammals are.

People are in love with the idea of who and what they are and the perpetual smile of the dolphin and the trainer kissing the whale are part of the false impressions people develop about these animals.

It isn’t that they are not stunning or smart but that people believe they should feed them, swim with them and connect with them instead of respecting them for the powerful predators that they are.

Most people don’t know about the tales of the marine mammals that chomp the snorkeler, push the surfer out to sea or those that get aggressive or exhibit sexual overtures at the humans in the water with them.

They want to believe that these are not normal behaviors but aberrant variations from the norm.

Care to share your impressions about marine mammals and how you formed them? Please leave your comments below.

You might remember the series I did on cat training with Mr B.

I just did a video for the Pet Parenting School for promotion and then I missed the submission deadline because I was in the middle of a project.

Hate that!

I thought this cat training video was a good way to show that you can start teaching an animal at a very young age and have it be fun and rewarding for both the human and cat.

The little Siamese is named “Max.”

I’ll be getting back to some subscriber questions again shortly but I’ve been buried in a very big project and since I know you love videos–thought I’d cheat with this short one today.

Hope you enjoy it.

At one time people didn’t bother to train their parrots but fortunately today that has changed.

In fact, some of my pals who were parrot breeders anticipated the wave of interest and created unique products for these animals and one even opened a chain of specialty pet stores with specialty services for the care and training of parrots.

In the above video you can see a variety of behaviors a parrot can learn–it just takes patience, persistence and skill.

There are a number of resources available (click the link) if you want to train a parrot .