Dolphin Saves Whales in New Zealand

On Monday, two pigmy sperm whales beached themselves in New Zealand and it took rescuers almost an hour to push them back into the sea. The mother and calf then beached themselves on a sandbar trying to make it back out to deeper water. Rescuers were heartbroken thinking that they would have to pull the animals down rather than have them suffer the long, agonizing death that whales suffer when beached.

Then along came a local bottleneck dolphin named Moko (named by the locals because he often hangs around and plays with swimnmers at the beach). Moko put himself between the rescuers and the whales, and then to the amazement of the would-be rescuers, the whales reacted to Moko's presence and followed Moko a couple of hundred meters down the beach where there was a deep channel through the sandbars leading out to see.

After the whales were free in open water, Moko returned to the beach to play with the local swimmers.

That's just cool.