Do you love dolphins as much as I do? If you do you have come to the right place. Dolphins are very intelligent creatures and are very docile too. They are related very closely to whales and porpoises. They are very powerful animals that are found in the seas all around the Earth. The dolphin is easily distinguished from a porpoise by the beaklike snouts and conical teeth. A porpoise, however, has a blunt snout with chisel-teeth, their bodies are more stout than that of a dolphin.
Dolphins have about 32 species. The bottle-nosed dolphin of course is most widely known; a popular attraction at many aquariums. Also, the common dolphin, which inspired many of the old Medditeranean folk legends. The small, but graceful dolphin, the buffeo dolphin, tucuxi, or more of a common name would be the river dolphin has been sighted more than 1,250 miles up the Amazon River. The buffeo is the smallest of all dolphins. It is less than 4 feet long. The largest dolphin is the bottle-nosed dolphin, reaching leagths of 10 feet and sometimes even more. The killer whale, or orca is concidered a dolphin even though it reaches lengths of 30 feet.
Sadly, though, many dolphins have been commercially hunted and killed for the small amounts of oil from parts of their heads to be used as lubricants. Now, luckily, cheaper oils have been found under the ground, so dolphins are finnally getting back the respect from humans that deserved hundreds of years ago. In present times dolphins are still killed commercially and accidently trapped in large tuna nets causing them to drowned. Beetween the years 1959-1972 an estimated 4.8 million dolphins were killed in the tuna nets.
The average dolphin eats mostly fish and squid that is almost equil to 4-6% of their weight in one day! Dolphins are fast enough to outdistance their prey very easily because of their swift swimming. They seize their prey with jaws holding 200-250 sharp teeth.
Dolphins breath trough a hole at the top of their head called a blowhole. The dolphin will surface every two minutes or so to exhale and than take in a large breath before submerging again. Dolphins can swim as fast as 19 m.p.h. withe bursts of up to 25 m.p.h. Their lungs have adapted well to the changes of pressure in the water which enables them to dive down more than 1,000 feet.
Adults of the most studied species, the bottle-nosed dolphin, comes to sexual maturity after 5-12 years in the females and 9-13 years in the males. They mate in the spring; after a gestation period of 11-12 months, a single calf is born, tail first. The babies swim and breath within minutes of birth and nurse for up to 18 months.
Dolphins send out either clicking sounds or whistles almost constantly. The are short pulses that from below the blowhole. The clicks are used as echolocation which enables them to in complete darkess like a bat. The whistles are genered from deeper in the larnx. They are used as communication, sexual exitement, and even perhaps other emotional states.
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