Little Girl Gets Bitten By A Dolphin At SeaWorld

Those who visit SeaWorld probably don't expect to get bitten by a dolphin while they're there, but that's what happened to one little girl as she was feeding the water-dwelling mammals at an exhibit. The incident was caught on tape and shows 8-year-old Jillian Thomas as she's first feeding the dolphins and then briefly caught between the fish and the dolphin's jaws.

As you'll see in the video below, the little girl is enjoying herself as she tosses fish into the mouths of the hungry dolphins. At one point, she appears to be out of fish and she lifts up the paper tray, and that's when one of the dolphins lunges forward and snaps its jaws down on her arm (and the tray). It only holds them there briefly before the dolphin drops back into the water, but its teeth left puncture wounds in the girl's wrist and hand.

From what CBS News reports, SeaWorld warns people not to lift the paper tray, but the parents said they were never warned of the danger. From what the video shows, it seems like the dolphin's interest was in the tray of fish and not the little girl. With that said, children get distracted and even if they're told the rules (like don't raise the paper tray), they might not remember them, especially if they're too excited about feeding dolphins to think about anything else. It only takes a second for an accident to happen and clearly, that's all it took for this child to get hurt. Maybe this was just an isolated incident, or maybe SeaWorld needs to consider an age limit for the exhibit, if the exhibit needs to exist at all.