Bottlenose Dolphins are Amazing By Sarah Winter

Scientific Clarifications Classification: Kingdom Animalia Phylum Chordata Class Mammalia Order Cetacea Family Delpinidae Genus Tursiops Species Turncatus Scientific name: Tursiops Turncatus

Dolphins in General Closely related to: whales and porpoises Height: 3.5 meters long Weight: kilograms in a lifetime Special names: baby- calves female- cows male- bulls group- pods

Dolphins’ Body Color: grey to dark grey on its back, fading to white on its belly. Symmetry: Dolphins have only one line of symmetry; right down the spine splitting the dorsal fin in half, vertically. Shape: looks like an air plane with an extra fin on top. Skin: soft texture and is super smooth.

Dolphins’ Body Parts Body Parts: Pectoral flippers are the forelimbs of Bottlenose Dolphins. They use this part of the body to steer and to stop using flukes. They also stoke one another with the pectoral flippers, increasing social bond. Flukes are used to move in the water. Dolphins propel themselves by the up and down moments of the flukes. Flukes do not contain bones, it is made up of fibrous connective tissue. Dorsal fins also have no bones like Flukes. At the time of swimming it help Dolphins to stabilize. They also use their tails to hunt, hitting the fish in order to catch and swallow it. The eyes and ears are located at the sides of the head. Because the ears are the inner parts, they are hardly seen on the surface of the body. But the dimples seen near eyes can show you its inner ears.

Survival Predators: most of the predators are large sharks; usually great white, bull, dusky, and tiger sharks. Some say killer whales are predators although this has never been observed. But the most dangerous killer of all are humans; they are always being accidentally caught in fishing nets. Defense: Dolphins defend themselves by battering their snouts into the sharks soft underbelly. This can result to killing the shark. Movement: Bottlenose Dolphins move by swimming, and when they want to perform, they jump. They swim both fast and slow, much like how humans get around on foot. When they want to show off by jumping out of the water and back in forming half a circle, they swim fast, when they want to relax in the water and just take a swim, they go slow. When dolphins are being chased by a predator, they obviously swim fast, this is why their speed is so important.

Diet Prey: Dolphins are carnivores eating up to 20 pounds of food each day, mostly small fish, crabs, squid and sometimes crustaceans. Capturing food: One way Dolphins get their food is by whacking the fish with their tail, they call this fish whacking. Food Chain: Bottlenose Dolphins are about in the middle of the food chain Way of eating: Bottlenose Dolphins eat eat food just like humans; by chewing the food with their teeth.

Reproduction Dolphin Love: Mating Dolphins- like most mammals, Bottlenose Dolphins give live birth to their young, and nurse them with mammary glands, though it sounds odd to imagine nursing underwater. But the birth of a dolphin starts long before his babyhood; it starts with how Mom and Dad first met. Most of what is known from recent research about dolphin reproduction was observed in captivity, which some might agree is not necessarily normal behavior. But what has been determined is that dolphins are most likely to mate during the spring, with male- female courtship ritual which is like dolphin dating. When a male dolphin is interested in a female he will nudge her from behind with his sex organs for several minutes, and then mounts her. After this dolphin mating is roughly as ordinary as any other mammalian mating. Dolphins are among the most sexual of animals, and they have more than one partner. When aroused, a dolphin male may mate several times an hour, often with the same female but not always. But even though the male may play and then swim away, female dolphins can usually depend on their pods to help protect the baby dolphin. Bottlenose Dolphins usually only give birth to one calf at a time there have been situations found where multiples are produced. They will then give birth to this calf months later. And because dolphins are mammals they do not reproduce asexually.

Behavior Traveling: Bottlenose Dolphins travel in groups called pods. They do not migrate in the fall to prepare for the winter, but they do move seasonally. Nocturnalation: Dolphins mostly search in the day but when fish start to migrate they become nocturnal.

Habitat and Home Biome: Bottlenose Dolphins live in warm watered oceans all around the world. They live as far north as Japan and Norway and as far south as Argentina and New Zealand. They also live near the southern tip of Africa too.

Works Cited 2009-WikiAnswers.com,

Works Cited continued 2009-Dolphinkind.com, (unknown)-Dolphins-world.com, eHow.com, /