Monkey Mia

Since the 1960s, a small group of wild bottlenose dolphins has visited the shallow waters at Monkey Mia each morning to be hand-fed by rangers. The tradition began in 1964 when local fishermen began tossing fish scraps to a dolphin who came alongside their boats — and she kept coming back, eventually bringing her calf and other dolphins. The behaviour has been passed down through five generations of dolphins. It is one of the longest-running and most studied examples of wild animal-human interaction in the world.

The dolphins are wild and free — they leave after the morning feeding and spend the day hunting, socialising and travelling up to 100 kilometres. Rangers carefully manage the feeding to ensure the dolphins don't become dependent and lose their ability to hunt. Only five dolphins are eligible for the hand-feeding program at any time, and they receive less than a quarter of their daily food needs from humans. The surrounding Shark Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with 10,000 dugongs — the world's largest concentration — and vast seagrass meadows that are the primary food source for the dugong population.