Why Flipper Flipped

Kathy the dolphin was a bottle nosed dolphin and the primary dolphin of the 1964 show "Flipper".

There were four other dolphins.

All five dolphins were taken directly out of the wild and trained to act for entertainment purposes.

The dolphins used were mostly female.

Females are less aggressive and tend to be free of bodily dis figuration from skirmishes with other dolphins.

She spent countless hours on set.

When her acting career was over, she  was retired to a small chamber in the Miami Seaquarium.

She was isolated.

It was here that she became depressed and miserable. It led her to suicide soon after the show ended.

Ric O'Barry, her trainer, was called in to check in on Kathy.

Ric realized Kathy was much sicker than anyone had expected her to be.

She swam into his arms and she held her breath until she died.

“She was really depressed… You have to understand dolphins and whales are not air breathers like we are. Every breath they take is a conscious effort. They can end their life whenever,” Ric told Oprah. “She swam into my arms and looked me right in the eye, took a breath and didn’t take another one. I let her go and she sank straight down on her belly to the bottom of the tank.”

Kathy's trainer insists that she killed herself due to a broken heart.

The day after she killed herself,  Rick went to jail for attempting to free the remaining dolphins from captivity.

Ric began focusing his efforts towards ending the captivity of dolphins, on Earth Day of 1970.

Eventually he founded the Dolphin Project.

He also starred in "The Cove."The film follows former dolphin trainer and activist Ric O'Barry's quest to document the dolphin hunting operations in Taiji, Wakayama, Japan.

She wasn't the only dolphin known to become depressed to the point of taking its own life.

A dolphin named Peter, who was used in a scientific experiment, killed itself after being separated from its human experimenter 

He died by holding his breath as well.

Research has since proven that the stress and depression experienced by captured beings continues to lead whales and dolphins to become so depressed and hollow that they just decide to end it all of their own free will.