She’s got a sparkle in her eye and a distinctive dolphin grin.

But Winter, the year-old dolphin at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Florida, is missing a very significant part of her anatomy: a tail.

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The young bottlenosed dolphin lost her tail and joint when she was caught in a crab trap near Indian River Lagoon, along Florida’s east coast. She was just a baby of three months.

The rope wrapped around her tail and cut off the blood supply. “It looked like paper,” said Dana Zucker, chief operating officer of the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. “Bit by bit over the weeks it just fell off.”

The lack of a tail did not slow the bright dolphin down, however. Instead, Winter simply learned how to swim without — using a startling combination of moves that resemble an alligator’s undulating swimming style and a shark’s side-to-side tail swipes.

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Though flippers are normally employed for steering and braking, Winter uses them to work up momentum.

Despite her ingenuity, scientists searched for a possible solution to the missing tail - and they may just have found one.

A prosthetic specialist has invented a prosthetic tail for Winter, including a gel sleeve that will not irritate her sensitive skin.

It is the first for a dolphin, and it remains to be seen how successful it will be over the long-term.

In the meantime, however, Winter the tailless dolphin is making history.

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Source:http://www.dailymail.co.uk