Planet Ripple-27- Rescue

Especially in the future.

Nope. She was born with four stumps.

Oh, I know. Because we're both mammals, when they use their sonar ability, we basically look the same, inside. They sense our lungs, our heartbeat, even a baby in the womb! And when a dolphin gets too tired to go up for air, another dolphin will help them out by pushing them up, so they know to do the same thing to us. Of course, they aren't always nice. Some dolphins just get too pissed off to care and may bite or ram a person cause they're in a bad mood. But if a friendly dolphin sees someone like Minnow in danger, it triggers the same instinct to take care of their own.

They're one of those special "sister" species gifted with self awareness, and advanced spindle cells that let them empathize with people other than themselves, like elephants. And in the 30,000 year gap between our time and Minnow's time, they've become EVEN MORE intelligent. Now they know to follow ships around because that's where the people (and food) are, and they even understand human speech to a degree. They can't speak it, of course, but they'd understand if you said something like "thank you," or "please help," to them.

This is how she arrived on the Balena, yes. She was rescued from another ship.