Mammal

A marine obstetrician in a wetsuit, veterinarian Ian Walker sits quietly beside the dolphin pool at the National Aquarium in Baltimore and gently maneuvers his ultrasound probe on the belly of his patient. The expectant mom is Shiloh, a 21-year-old Atlantic bottlenose dolphin. She floats patiently on her side at the pool's edge, while a ghostly image of her healthy calf appears on a video screen at Walker's elbow. As the aquarium's Marine Mammal Pavilion turns 10 years old today, Shiloh is one of three female dolphins that are expecting.

Flipper would have been proud.There was Ric O'Barry, the guy who taught the legendary dolphin everything he knew, unfurling a protest banner inside the National Aquarium, telling the world that "Captivity Kills."As surprised patrons filed out of the packed 3:30 show at the Lyn P. Meyerhoff Amphitheater, Mr. O'Barry and another protester quickly moved in front of the 1.2-million gallon tank where Nani and Akai had just finished their modern-day Flipper routine."These are disposable dolphins.

Like all really scary stories, this one started with a purely innocent being: a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow. But when Dolly the sheep was born in 1996 -- making her the first mammal to be cloned from the cell of another animal -- it raised the very real specter that humans, too, might be duplicated in the foreseeable future. While there are no documented cases of human cloning so far, some experts think it's just a matter of time. A NUMBER / / Everyman Theatre / / 1727 N. Charles St. / / 410-752-2208 or everymantheatre.

Hopes for the survival of a critically ill whale rescued from a Long Island beach appeared to hinge yesterday on a logistical problem -- how to get the animal to Baltimore's National Aquarium, the closest available marine mammal hospital.Specialists with the Okeanos Ocean Research Institute Foundation on Long Island and the aquarium in Baltimore said National Guard and Coast Guard aircraft relied on in the past as ambulances for stranded marine mammals were not available, and they doubted that the animal could survive an eight-hour drive in a truck.

What's for dinner? White rhinos eat grass and shrubs. Using Your Senses... Rhinoceros have very poor vision and rely heavily on their senses of smell and hearing. Rhinos are the third largest land mammal (only African and Asian elephants are larger). Currently, there are five species: white, black, Indian, Javan, and Sumatran. Wild facts Do you know? How long can a white rhino go without a trip to the watering hole? Answer: The white rhino can survive for 3-4 days between watering hole visits.

Amid the furor over freeing "Willy" has come a deal to cure Keiko.Under an agreement announced yesterday, a group of marine mammal facilities will help a Mexico City amusement park provide better medical care and living conditions for Keiko, the 14-year-old killer whale who starred in this summer's movie hit "Free Willy."The park, Reino Aventura, also has agreed to find "an interim home" for its marine mammal star and has said that it remains open to the possibility of freeing Keiko -- an idea being pushed by animal rights organizations and advocates.

St. Patty's Day Walk Join the Freestate Happy Wanderers Saturday for a walk along loops that form the shape of a shamrock. The group's St. Patrick's Day Walk follows a 10K trail, with options of 5K, 15K and 20K. The loops are on a combination of natural-surface paths and paved streets and sidewalks. The walk starts at the food court in Historic Savage Mill and ends at the Rams Head Tavern, also in the Savage Mill complex. A Pokemon card will be awarded to children who complete the walk.

On a holiday weekend, the line at the National Aquarium in Baltimore grows long before most Marylanders get out of bed.For much of last summer, the line was frustratingly slow as well. It wasthe first year after the original building on Pier 3 was joined by the Marine Mammal Pavilion on Pier 4, and the swirl of visitors between the two resulted in crowd control problems no one had anticipated.But this year, aquarium officials believe they have overcome most of the congestion with the help of a computerized ticket center that issues timed-entry tickets so visitors know exactly when and where they'll be able to get in.Part of the process is a "double-entry" system in which two-thirds of all visitors enter the aquarium through the 11-year-old building on Pier 3 and one-third enter through the Marine Mammal Pavilion on Pier 4.The aquarium is also completing $1 million worth of physical improvements, including a series of new exhibits inside the Marine Mammal Pavilion that will give people more to see before and after the dolphin demonstrations that take place five to seven times a day."

If rodents in Spain are any guide, periodic changes in Earth's orbit might account for the apparent regularity with which new species of mammals emerge and then become extinct, scientists are reporting today. It so happens, the paleontologists say, that variations in the course that Earth travels around the sun and in the tilt of its axis are associated with episodes of global cooling. Their new research on the fossil record shows the cyclical pattern of these phenomena corresponds to species turnover in rodents and probably other mammal groups as well.

The National Aquarium in Baltimore is preparing to acquire three more Atlantic bottlenose dolphins from a marine mammal facility in the Florida Keys."I would hope we're going to have two or three of them up here by the end of the month," said Jackson Andrews, the aquarium's director of husbandry.If the aquarium does win federal permission to fly the three dolphins to Baltimore, the acquisition would bring to six the number of dolphins at the new Marine Mammal Pavilion.Three bottlenose dolphins purchased from a Texas marine park arrived in August and are now swimming in the pavilion's 1.2 million gallon display tank, which they share with three beluga whales captured in Hudson's Bay during the 1980s.