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Lovey
Lovey is a 3 year old female whale, born 5:20 AM, January 11, 1998, at Kamogawa Sea World, in Japan. Her mother, Stella, is a 19 year old Icelantic female captured in 1988. Her father, Bingo, is a 21 year old Icelantic male captured in 1986. She has one younger sister, Lara, born February 8, 2001. She also had an older half-sibling, born to her father and an Icelantic female named Maggie. That calf, who died after a day, was born before Lovey.

Shortly after her birth, Lovey was determined to be a female. Trainers used the stage name "Oyako" for her during this period. A contest was held to name her, and 36,000 people turned in names. The winning name was "Lovey". And while Oyako continues to be her stage name (Kamogawa uses the names "Syati" & "Oyako" for their whales, like Shamu & Baby Shamu) she is known by her trainers as Lovey.

Trainers noted that Lovey was a very curious calf. She imitated Stella's show behaviors very well, and invented ones of her own. In July of 1998, at 7 months old, she started eating fish from her trainers. Though she continued to nurse, her fish consumption increased. In July of 1999, she started performing on her own in the shows. Where she had previously only mimicked Stella's behaviors, she now could do her own show. 3 months later, she stopped nursing, and began eating 60 pounds of fish a day on her own.

Lovey continued to grow & perform well, even, in December of 2000, learning Kamogawa's hardest show behavior: hitting a ball with her tail while upside down in the air. At this point, she was 12 feet long, and weighed 2,200 pounds.

Then, in February of 2001, her mother Stella had another calf. Lovey was kept separate from her sister Lara at first, but has since been introduced to the calf. She seems to be handling the role of "Big Sis" well. Though there was some consideration of selling Lovey (before Lara's birth) Kamogawa has now decided against it.