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Why are dolphins so remarkable? Types of dolphins.

Each dolphin in the ocean has its own name, which it responds to when its relatives call it. He receives it immediately as soon as he is born, and it is a characteristic whistle lasting 0.9 seconds. Dolphins not only call each other by name, but also introduce themselves when meeting strangers. And identifying a relative by voice without seeing him is a piece of cake for them.

Dolphins are mammals from the family of toothed whales of the cetacean order. There are about forty species of these animals on the planet, and they can be seen anywhere in the World Ocean. Most dolphins prefer to live in tropical and subtropical latitudes, but there are some that like colder waters, so you can see them near the Arctic, and some species are found both there. For example, although the white-beaked dolphin lives mainly in the North Atlantic, it can often be seen off the coast of Turkey.

Most members of the family (for example, bottlenose dolphins, white-beaked dolphins) are marine inhabitants, but there are four species that prefer to live in fresh river or lake water. Lives river dolphin in Asia, as well as in the waters of the South American Amazon and Orinoco rivers.

Unfortunately, if previously representatives of this family were often encountered, now the river dolphin, due to loss of habitats and pollution, environment, a decrease in the amount of food and small populations has practically disappeared and is listed in the Red Book.

Description

The length of dolphins ranges from one and a half to ten meters. The smallest dolphin in the world is Maui, which lives near New Zealand: the length of the female does not exceed 1.7 meters. Large inhabitant depths of the sea The white-faced dolphin is considered to be about three meters long. The largest representative is the killer whale: males reach ten meters in length.

It is worth noting that males are usually ten to twenty centimeters longer than females (the exception is killer whale dolphins - here the difference is about two meters). They weigh on average from one hundred fifty to three hundred kilograms, the killer whale weighs about a ton.

The backs of sea dolphins can be gray, blue, dark brown, black and even pink (albinos). The front part of the head can be either plain or white (for example, the white-faced dolphin has a white beak and the front part of its forehead).

In some species, the front mouth is rounded and there is no beak-shaped mouth. Others don't large sizes the head ends with an elongated mouth in the shape of a flattened “beak”, and the mouth is shaped in such a way that it seems to people watching them that they are always smiling, and therefore they often have irresistible desire swim with dolphins. At the same time, the impression is not spoiled even by the huge number of teeth of the same cone shape - dolphins have about two hundred of them.

Thanks to their elongated body and smooth, elastic skin, these animals hardly feel the resistance of the water while moving. Thanks to this, they are able to move very quickly ( average speed a dolphin's speed is 40 km/h), dive to a depth of about one hundred meters, jump out of the water nine meters high and five meters long.

One more unique feature these marine mammals is that almost all types of dolphins (with the exception of the Amazon river dolphin and several other species) see well both underwater and above the surface. They have this ability due to the structure of the retina, one part of which is responsible for the image in the water, the other - above its surface.

Since whales and dolphins are relatives, like all representatives of cetaceans, they are quite capable of staying under water for a long period. But they still need oxygen, so they constantly float to the surface, showing their blue muzzle and replenishing air reserves through the blowhole, which closes under water. Even during sleep, the animal is fifty centimeters from the surface and, without waking up, swims out every half a minute.

Way of life

Dolphins live in schools and do not tolerate loneliness very well. Although they do not have a leader, they carry out all actions in coordination: they hunt together, raise children, have fun, performing one after another amazing beauty jumping.

The dolphin is considered one of the most intelligent mammals on our planet: the weight of its brain is 1700 grams, which is three hundred grams more than a human, and the convolutions in the cerebral cortex are also twice as large. This explains their highly developed social consciousness, ability to sympathize, readiness to help sick and wounded relatives, as well as drowning people.

Dolphins help quite actively: if one of the members of the pod is injured or barely stays afloat, they support him near the surface so that he cannot drown and choke. They do the same in relation to a person, also helping to get to the shore. Some scientists explain why dolphins do this by caring for the population: each individual in the pod is valuable - and everything must be done to save its life.

Language

To communicate, animals use gestures (turns, jumps, various swimming styles, head, fins, tail), as well as voice: the sounds of dolphins are about 14 thousand signals, and everyone has heard about the songs of dolphins. These unique animals are capable of perceiving vibration frequencies of up to 200 thousand per second, while the human ear is up to 20 thousand.

They are also four times more capable of analyzing dolphin sounds by separating frequencies from each other (to find out why dolphins have these abilities, see Lately a lot of research is being done). Communication occurs mainly with the help of ultrasound (it is especially convenient for them to use it to transmit sound over vast distances).

Dolphin songs are not only ultrasound: the sounds of dolphins often sound at a medium frequency and are expressed by clicks, creaks, and whistles (studies have shown that they perceive their speech as hieroglyphic pictures).

There are two types of dolphin sounds:

Sonar or echolocation - animals hear the echo of a beating sound and identify it;
Whistling or chirping - these sounds of dolphins are used for close communication with relatives and the animals express their emotions with them. Scientists counted about 186 different types“whistles”, which, like human speech, contain sounds, syllables, words, phrases, paragraphs, context and dialect.

Nutrition

Dolphins' diet is based on fish, squid, and shrimp (some dolphins in the ocean are quite capable of diving to a depth of 260 kilometers to catch their favorite prey); killer whales eat marine mammals and birds.

They catch fish in different ways. Sometimes the whole school of dolphins searches for her, sometimes in a separate group or they send a scout to look for her.

If the hunt takes place in the open sea, dolphins surround a large school of fish, crowding them into a heap, after which they take turns diving there and feeding. If they are fishing near the shore, the strategy is somewhat different: a school of dolphins drives the schools towards land, after which the fish are easily caught in shallow water.

Reproduction

The ability to reproduce in females appears between the fifth and twelfth years of life, in males - between the ninth and thirteenth. Their pairs are unstable and the animals change partners every time.

Exactly how long pregnancy lasts has not been established; the period is estimated to range from ten to eighteen months. When giving birth, the female is very close to the surface so that, as soon as the baby is born, she raises her tail high, giving him the opportunity to take a breath of air before falling into the water.

Usually one baby is born, about half a meter long, and until six months the mother feeds it with milk and protects it. Newborn babies usually do not fall asleep during the first month of their life and do not allow their mothers to sleep, swimming around them and surfacing every thirty seconds, forcing them to be constantly on alert.

Relationships with people

Humans and dolphins have a long and complex history: Until recently, animals were actively hunted, which led to the complete and partial extinction of some species. After fishing was banned, the situation became better, but new trend: catching these animals for show (especially since they are very smart and catch everything on the fly) and giving people far from the sea the opportunity to swim with dolphins. It should be noted that the idea is not the best, because if in natural conditions the inhabitants of the sea live from thirty to fifty years, in captivity - only seven.

Their rapid death is primarily influenced by an overly passive lifestyle, even despite constant training to participate in the show, extremely limited space and water quality: the lack of a full range of nutrients and minerals they need.

Recently, people and dolphins have learned to interact better (primarily this concerns humans, since these animals are sociable, friendly and peaceful). Moreover, communication with these mammals benefits almost everyone: by giving the opportunity to listen to the songs of dolphins, communicate, stroke the blue back, feed fish, swim with dolphins, psychotherapists and doctors effectively use them to treat diseases in children such as cerebral palsy, early childhood autism, etc.

People who pride themselves on their intelligence sometimes forget that they are not the only species on the planet that has intelligence. Some animals also boast the ability to think and analyze, although their level of brain activity is slightly lower than that of humans. Dolphins in the ocean- one of the brightest examples of smart animals.

Perhaps, if a person had developed under different conditions, he would never have been able to train his mind, and would not have reached the heights that can be observed today. And then these graceful inhabitants of rivers, seas and oceans could well lay claim to the title of the most intelligent creatures.

Photo: mrfab.info

Perhaps the most famous dolphins in the world are bottlenose dolphins. These water-dwelling mammals have long been famous for their intelligence. What sense is there! They, like humans, are capable of experiencing various emotions, as well as showing compassion.

The latter is very easy to prove - many facts have been recorded that bottlenose dolphins come to the aid of people in trouble. The most striking example is the situation that took place in 2004 off the coast of New Zealand. Four rescuers, who had moved quite a distance from the shore, were noticed by one of the most dangerous sea predators – White shark. And if a flock of bottlenose dolphins had not come to the aid of people, protecting them until they swam to the shore, it is unknown how the meeting of the swimmers with the carnivorous creature would have ended.

Bottlenose dolphins are physiologically more similar to humans than might seem at first glance. Born babies cannot survive without care, and their mothers, just like representatives of the human race, take care of the babies. Bottlenose dolphins breathe in the same way as people: despite the fact that their element is water, they do not have special devices for breathing, such as gills in fish. To get a portion of oxygen, dolphins are forced to swim to the surface.

Photo: stopdolphinslaughter.com

Separately, it is worth mentioning the interaction between representatives of the human race and bottlenose dolphins. Experienced travelers know that bottlenose dolphins are very curious and are happy to make contact with people, sometimes even helping them achieve their goals. For example, a flock of bottlenose dolphins living near south coast Brazil, in the lagoon, helps fishermen collect a rich catch. They literally drive fish into nets. And this is not a one-day phenomenon: bottlenose dolphins have been practicing this type of assistance since 1847.

Bottlenose dolphins easily absorb new knowledge, which is why they can most often be found in dolphinariums. Moreover, their abilities are not limited to showing various tricks. During World War II, some dolphins served in the armed forces of the USSR and the USA - their duties included searching for underwater mines and spy divers.

Photo: bingapis.com

This species of dolphin owes its name to the scientist Filleber Commerson, who was the first researcher to compile exact description of this animal. However, you can also find another name for this mammal - motley dolphin.

Indeed, the color does not allow it to be confused with representatives of other species. The black head, tail and back to the fin against the white background of the rest of the body makes it easy to recognize the motley dolphin and see it even at great depths.

Photo: thewallpapers.org

Another feature of the dolphin is its life expectancy. Typically, in captivity, representatives of the animal world live somewhat shorter, often losing the ability to reproduce. In this case, everything is quite the opposite: in conditions wild world Commerson's dolphins live no more than 10 years, but individuals raised in captivity and under human care can live 12 years or even more.

Variegated dolphins love to watch people. They prefer to swim near the surface and often jump out of the water while exploring. the world. Their favorite pastime is escorting ships.

Photo: bashny.net

Do not forget that not all representatives of this species are friendly towards other inhabitants of the planet. For example, the killer whale, the largest carnivorous dolphin, will happily feast on a gaping walrus. They usually do not show hostility towards humans. However, do not underestimate this creature, which still belongs to the category of predators.

Surprisingly, despite a large number of Given the dangers that await them in the ocean, killer whales live quite a long time. Moreover, the life expectancy of females is almost twice as long as that of males - representatives of the fair sex live on average 50-80 years, while “men” often die at 30.

It has long been known that dolphins use a special system of sounds that allow them to communicate with each other. And killer whales have two “languages”: common and intragroup. The latter is unique: the set of signals can only be understood by members of the group living together. Other "tribes" cannot decipher it.

Photo: projectnoah.org

The population of these dolphins, which live in only one place - in the warm shallow waters off the coast of New Zealand, is small: no more than 7,000 individuals live in the world. This fact allows us to say that Hector’s dolphins, or rather their subspecies called Maui, are the most rare view these creatures. The number of individuals is constantly decreasing and today there are less than 100 representatives living in the world.

What is the reason for such a small number? The fact is that these dolphins do not like to travel and avoid all currents. They do not leave their habitat, they mainly live in small groups, which prevents the reproduction of this species in natural environment. Another factor that causes the population decline is poaching. And even if people engaged in illegal fishing do not have the goal of catching a dolphin, these mammals often end up in their nets. And since the trapped aquatic inhabitant does not know how to breathe at depth, he simply dies from lack of oxygen.

Hector's dolphins are the smallest dolphins in the world. They are no larger than a person in size: the average height is 1.7 meters, and their weight ranges from 35 to 60 kilograms.

Another one interesting feature of this type - unusual way transferring information to each other. If other dolphins whistle, attracting the attention of their relatives and trying to tell them some information, then representatives of this “tribe” communicate with each other using sounds more like a clattering sound. Moreover, the conversation is conducted at different frequencies.

Photo: diendanlequydon.com

This animal is sacred to the people of Cambodia and Laos. However, despite this status and numerous attempts by people to preserve the population, Irrawaddy dolphins are gradually becoming extinct. The number of representatives of the species decreases every year: old individuals die of natural causes, and young ones often behave carelessly, getting caught in nets and suffocating.

Irrawaddy dolphins have many characteristics that distinguish them from representatives of other species of these creatures. Firstly, they do not have a “beak” - their jaws are not elongated, and accordingly, they do not have any protrusion on the muzzle. Secondly, Irrawaddy dolphins have a mobile neck - unlike other species, these individuals are able to turn their heads, which they actively use to inspect the surroundings.

Photo: cactusforsale.info

Graceful aquatic inhabitants are very friendly towards people and constantly make contact. However, a person does not always answer them in the same way. Quite often, dolphins die because of our fault. And if a person calls himself a rational being, it means that the concern for the well-being of his smaller brothers falls on his shoulders. After all, who knows, maybe they will play important role in the fate of humanity.

That's all we have. We are very glad that you visited our website and spent a little time to gain new knowledge.

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Hello friends! Since you are reading this article, then you are interested in learning something new about dolphins. Today you have a great opportunity to get to know them better. The dolphin is a smart animal, they even heal people, as I wrote in.

Let's figure out who dolphins are and what they are. Like you, like me, they belong to the class of mammals. About eleven million years ago, the ancestors of dolphins decided to leave the water, setting off to explore the vastness of the earth. Looking around, they were horrified. That is why the dolphins had to return to the expanses of the water surface. These beauties have teeth, being warm-blooded, they feed their cubs with milk.

Habitat

Wikipedia says that they prefer seas and oceans as their habitat. There is practically no place where these mammals have not settled in our world. From the Red Sea to the northern reservoirs. Further - more: sometimes these animals choose rivers. The bottlenose species or the small bottlenose dolphin prefer tropical water.

How are they born?

Do you know how dolphins are born? The bottlenose dolphin carries the baby for about a year. It is born tail first. The cub's eyes are immediately open, and its senses are extremely developed. Moreover, a barely born dolphin already has sufficient coordination to follow in the footsteps of its mother, who helps to rise to the surface. Then comes the baby dolphin's first breath in his life. Such a trusting relationship between a child dolphin and its mother lasts approximately from 3 to 8 years.

A mother dolphin feeds her baby dolphin.

Breathtaking speed

I don’t know about you, but for me the following fact became a real revelation. Dolphins develop amazing speed. As for bottlenose dolphins, they develop from four to eleven kilometers per hour. The caudal fin, the strongest part of the body, helps in this. If there is such a need, the speed can reach up to 32 kilometers per hour! The body has perfect shape allowing free movement in the water.

Dolphins do not face such a thing as resistance. The body of a dolphin has been covered with scars since childhood, because these beauties have a uniquely smooth skin that helps them swim in the depths of the water. Just admire, watch this video of how dolphins accompany the ship:

Breath of dolphins

Another interesting fact from the life of these animals is associated with... breathing! They breathe air. Despite the lack of gills (unlike fish), they have lungs and a unique blowhole located on the upper part of the body. With the help of it, dolphins, like whales, make all kinds of sounds. Bottlenose dolphins can hold their breath for more than seven and a half minutes! But they can spend no more than a quarter of an hour under water - otherwise they are at risk.

Gastronomic preferences

Dolphins prefer to feast on different types fish and squid. It depends on the region in which the friend lives. For example, dolphins of the river family are real gourmets. They care what they eat. The teeth and jaws are not developed enough to make chewing movements. They swallow the fish whole.

Dolphins and people: who is smarter?

I was also very interested to know: is it a myth that dolphins are smarter than people? The bottlenose dolphin's brain is the same size as a human's. However, the elephant is four times more developed! the main role is given to the relationship between the brain and spinal cord. For example, for a dolphin it is forty to one, while for a person it is fifty to one. Cats have a ratio of five to one, but this does not mean that they are stupid.

As far as one can judge, the ratios between humans and dolphins are close. But these animals live in a completely different environment. It requires other abilities: hearing, vision and other factors, without which one cannot survive under water. Dolphins know how to heal people, in addition, read about it here.

Dolphin sizes

Are you wondering: is a dolphin a fish or...? Based on size, these comrades are much larger than fish. Dolphins can be quite large. For example, the killer whale can be considered the largest of the family. Its length at birth is up to two and a half meters, amazing! Over time, the figure will reach six meters. But speaking of bottlenose dolphins, they are born barely a meter in length. It is rare that a bottlenose dolphin grows to exceed 2.5 meters.

What sounds do dolphins make?

Also, I wondered why dolphins make all sorts of sounds. I was curious to find the answer, which I am happy to share with you today. As mentioned above, the blowhole helps them “speak.” There is a whistle - for communication with each other, and sounds of a pulsating type, indicating emotional condition, like anger or excitement, and clicks to detect echolocation. That is, the direction. The animal world never ceases to amaze.

Dolphins know how to have fun!

Do you think it's true that dolphins like to play with each other? From time to time you have to watch how these animals jump out of the water and do something! Unimaginable acrobats. Swimming back and forth, playing with the waves, they make you hold your breath. There is a logical explanation for all this. By jumping out, the dolphins determine where the school of fish has passed. The games make up quite significant part the lives of these individuals.

They like to sort through pieces of coral, algae, communicate with their own kind, birds and even turtles. Dolphins are having fun while riding the waves! These are their games, friends. By the way, look at this funny video of a dolphin playing with a cat, my soul always warms up after watching it:

Why don't dolphins freeze underwater?

Finally, let's find out why dolphins, being warm-blooded, do not freeze in the water. Their body temperature is 36.6 degrees. IN northern seas Animals need to stay warm. Water, which conducts heat up to twenty-five times more efficiently than air, allows you to freeze much faster than in air.

Why do dolphins perform such miracles?! This is due to a large layer of fat under the skin. They can control their blood circulation and metabolism. This makes it possible to support normal temperature bodies, as Wikipedia says.

And finally, I have a small request for you, I recently found this video below on the Internet, which tells and shows how dolphins live in dolphinariums, watch it and write in the comments what you think about this?

Dolphins are one of the most mysterious animals on our planet. The intelligence of these sea inhabitants considered so high that they are called “people of the sea.” Scientists say that dolphins are smarter and smarter than all other animals.

Dolphins live in water, but they are not fish, but mammals from the order Cetacea. That is, they need air - they breathe with their lungs, not their gills. People can always see dolphins' faces on the surface of the sea because dolphins can stay underwater for an average of about 3-5 minutes (although dolphins have been recorded underwater for 10 to 15 minutes). Dolphins feed their young with milk.

Dolphins are found in many seas and oceans of the world, including the Black Sea.
Dolphins live up to 75 years, most often about 50, in captivity usually about 30. With the help of its 88 teeth, the Black Sea dolphin eats about 30 kg of fish per day, the mass of dolphins is up to 500 kg. The body temperature of a dolphin is the same as that of a person - 36.6 degrees. The gestation period of dolphins is about 12 months. The female dolphin usually brings one calf 50-60 cm long and carefully guards it for some time.

When you mention a dolphin, you are more likely to think of the species Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus). Bottlenose dolphins owe their popularity partly to numerous references in cinema and fiction and high learning ability.

The skin of dolphins is a miracle of nature; they are able to dampen the turbulence of water near the surface of a fast-swimming body, which reduces the speed of movement - designers learned from dolphins submarines, creating artificial skins for submarines. And the feeling of dolphin skin to the touch is completely unusual, and also brings joy: it looks dense, like it’s made of plastic, but when you run your palm over it, it’s tender and soft, it seems like thin silk.

When dolphins began to be studied and trained in the middle of the last century, the first results of this work seemed so unusual, and even surprising (they talked about it a lot, wrote about it and made films) that a legend gradually developed about the unusually high intelligence of dolphins; one could often hear that they were no more stupid than a person, only their minds were different.

The brain of an adult dolphin weighs about 1,700 grams, while that of a human weighs 1,400. A dolphin has twice as many convolutions in the cerebral cortex. At the same time, there are relatively few neurons per cubic millimeter of its substance (less than in the brain of primates).

The results of studies on the behavior and physiology of the brain of dolphins are very contradictory. Some put their ability to learn at about the level of a dog and show that dolphins are very far from chimpanzees. Research on the communication methods of dolphins, on the contrary, leads to the conclusion that we have not yet come close to understanding this form of life in natural conditions and comparing the level of intelligence of dolphins and chimpanzees is simply incorrect. One property of the dolphin brain is completely unique: it never really sleeps. They sleep - alternately - then left, then right hemisphere brain The dolphin needs to come to the surface from time to time to breathe. At night, the waking halves of the brain are responsible for this, in turn.

The language of dolphins can be divided into 2 groups: Body language (body language) - various poses, jumps, turns, various ways swimming, signs given by the tail, head, fins.

The language of sounds (language itself) is a sound signaling expressed in the form of sound impulses and ultrasound. Examples of such sounds include: chirping, buzzing, squealing, grinding, clicking, smacking, squeaking, popping, squeaking, roaring, screaming, screaming, croaking, and whistling.

The most expressive are whistles, of which dolphins have 32 species. Each of them can denote a specific phrase (signals of pain, anxiety, greetings and a calling cry “come to me,” etc.). Scientists studied dolphin whistles using the Zipf method and obtained the same slope coefficient as human languages, that is, carrying information. Recently, about 180 communication signs have been discovered in dolphins, which they are trying to systematize, compiling a dictionary of communication between these mammals. However, despite numerous studies, it has not been possible to completely decipher the language of dolphins.

Each dolphin has its own name, to which it responds when its relatives address it. This conclusion was reached by American scientists, the results of which were published in the Bulletin of the US National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Moreover, experts who conducted their experiments in the American state of Florida found that the name is given to the dolphin at birth and is a characteristic whistle.

Scientists captured 14 light gray bottlenose dolphins in the wild and recorded the various sounds these mammals made as they communicated with each other. Then, using a computer, “names” were extracted from the records. When the name was “played” for the flock, a specific individual responded to it. The dolphin’s “name” is a characteristic whistle, the average duration of which is 0.9 seconds.

Everyone has heard that sometimes dolphins and other whales wash ashore. Sometimes this happens due to illness, poisoning or injury. There is another hypothesis that explains the reason for this strange behavior dolphins: it turns out that with a certain shape of the coast, composed of certain types of sediments, among the cacophony of sounds generated by the surf, sometimes a sound arises that exactly corresponds to the cry of a dolphin for help. Animals, hearing these sounds, instinctively rush to help - and end up on the shore.

Dolphins eat fish. A lot of fish: each member of the flock should eat 10-30 kilograms per day. Dolphins are warm-blooded; they need to maintain a high body temperature, sometimes very cold water. The subcutaneous layer of fat also helps with this - it acts as a heat insulator and source of energy for the intracellular oven: burning fats and carbohydrates with the release of thermal energy. Fuel reserves need to be replenished all the time, so they constantly hunt. They catch up with a school of fish - no one in the sea swims faster than them - and surround it. If this happens very close to the shore, the dolphins form a semi-ring and press the fish to the beach; compressing their hunting formation, they push the fish into the shallowest water and eat it there - while they swim into the very waves of the surf, so shallow that their dorsal fins stick out of the water, and their pectoral fins touch the sand at the bottom.

Having surrounded a school of fish further out into the sea, the dolphins do not rush, each individually, after the prey, but organize the school in a ring, preventing the fish from scattering, and one by one plunge into the school. Having caught prey, they return to their place in the pen.

Where there are fish, there are dolphins. U Black Sea coast the fish are most abundant in spring and autumn - when schools of mullet and anchovy go to the Sea of Azov for summer feeding, or return to winter in the Black Sea - along the coast of the Caucasus. Therefore, dolphins most often appear here in April-May and September-October. And in the Kerch Strait itself - the gate Sea of Azov– hundreds of dolphins stand at the outpost, meeting migrating fish stocks.

In summer, bottlenose dolphins also often come straight to the beach - they are more often seen in the early morning or afternoon - perhaps because there are fewer swimmers at this time.

Dolphins live in schools, in which everyone is relative, which is why their mutual assistance is so well developed. They always help a weakened dolphin stay near the surface so that it does not choke; There are stories of how dolphins came to the aid of drowning people. They never act hostile. Dolphins learn tricks very quickly - they only need one correct execution of an exercise on a signal, for which they are rewarded with a fish, so that the skill is fixed in memory. True, they also easily forget their skills if the coach forgets to reinforce a useful habit.

Dolphins live for about 30 years. Dolphins are born approximately once every two years. At this time, the dolphin tries to jump high so that the calf can take its first breath. Dolphins are very touching parents, caring for their young for about five years. And even when reaching puberty, the cub still remains strongly attached to its mother and tries to follow her everywhere.

For a long time, scientists were puzzled by the question of how dolphins sleep. After all, in the sea you can easily drown or become a victim of attack by other predators. However, it has now turned out that the sleep of dolphins is not similar to the sleep of ordinary animals - during sleep, one hemisphere of the dolphin rests, and the other is awake. Thus, the dolphin is always in control of the situation and, at the same time, gets complete rest.

Definitely, something makes us treat dolphins differently than other animals - “friends of man”... Friendly, cheerful, cute... They are really friendly and curious: they are not afraid to swim up and play with a person, although more often - or not pay attention to people, or simply swim away - they have their own worries at sea. Maybe it's the dolphin's smile? After all, they always smile - for some reason, that’s how their face is structured (I don’t even want to call it a muzzle!). And this smile with big eyes- one of those smiles that make us involuntarily smile back - not all people know how to smile like that.

Niramin - Nov 26th, 2015

Dolphins are mammals of the dolphin family from the order Cetacea. There are about 40 types of them. The most close-up view considered to be a killer whale.

What do dolphins look like?

They have a bare, streamlined body, an elongated muzzle, and a pointed dorsal fin. The eyes are small and lack sharp vision. Skin color can be of two types: plain - gray, Pink colour, or contrasting - when large areas are painted black and white.

Depending on the species, there are different weights: from 40 kg to 500 kg. The body length reaches 1.2 m, but the killer whale can be up to 9 m and weigh 7.5 tons.

They may not sleep for up to 5 days, but this does not affect their health. If they sleep, then very little. If they sleep for a long time, they can suffocate and die. When they rest, one half of the brain is asleep, the other is awake, then they can breathe.

Dolphins are warm-blooded animals. Their body temperature is the same as a human's, 36.6°C.

They have echolocation - they determine the location of an object by capturing a reflected sound wave. Communicate between relatives using sounds of various durations, they warn about impending danger with sound signals.

Where do dolphins live

They live in almost all the seas of the world and in shallow tropical latitudes of the oceans. You can also find it in the Black Sea. Only 5 species of river dolphins live in rivers.

Dolphin feeding

They eat small fish– anchovies, sardines, squid, crustaceans. The killer whale prefers walruses, seals and sea lions. Interestingly, with 40 teeth, they swallow all prey whole without chewing.

Reproduction and lifespan of dolphins

Mating occurs throughout the year. The pregnancy is carried by a female dolphin, depending on the type of animal, from 9 to 16 months. Only one cub is born. The mother immediately pushes the newborn to the surface of the water so that he takes his first breath. They are fed with mother's milk for six months.

The maximum life expectancy is 50 years. In captivity, their life is shortened to 25 years, as the animals are often used to perform acrobatic stunts in dolphinariums.

See a gallery of photographs of different dolphins:

Photo: Long-beaked dolphin

Photo: Long-snouted common whitetail

Photo: whale dolphins

Photo: Orcas

Photo: Large-toothed dolphin

Photo: Variegated dolphins

Photo: Gray dolphin

Photo: Bottlenose dolphins

Photo: Beakless dolphins

Photo: Humpback dolphin

Photo: Grindas

Photo: frolicking dolphins