Friendly sea creatures? For sure, Dolphin is your answer or the first thing that comes to your mind. Aside from that, they are highly sociable; they are as intelligent as human beings, which may be why dolphins have a special bond or have the closest social link to humans. Dolphins are the most loved sea creature.
Dolphins are fun-loving. But, they can also be aggressive and dubious when they are afraid, angry, and frustrated. They live in a group called pods, which are so friendly that they even hunt and play together. Dolphins are also known for using its sensory system called echolocation.
Characteristics
One of the least known dolphin facts is that they can’t breathe underwater, just like any mammals. These mammals can stay underwater without breathing for approximately 20 minutes, more or less. They have this time to catch their food and a lot of time to play around. They use blowholes about a quarter’s size with inner valves and outer valves to make the water come out when they are underwater. The bottlenose dolphin is the most popular; they come to the surface once every 28 seconds to breathe.
Dolphins are known to be playful and often seen doing flips and jumping high out of the water. They can reach heights over 15 feet and tail-walk across the water. Well-trained dolphins can do multiple twirls and wave the audience with their fins and flukes.
They sleep with only one eye closed while the other vision is still conscious around it to avoid danger from the things that could threaten them like predators. Dolphins typically eat fish. You will be surprised that they also eat big ones like seals or sea lions. But the newborn ones rely on their mother for food by sucking on its nipple of some slimy milk until they are capable enough to hunt for their own.
Some of them, even in the wild, are so friendly to humans. One of the reasons we often see them, sometimes few, but there are times that it’s a vast number of them jumping randomly beside the running boats, trying to reach out or say something without fear of being caught.
How Many Species Do They Have
Around 40 dolphin species are out there in the wild. Don’t be fooled by the name killer whale because they belong to dolphin species. They can fool their prey with their appearance. They may look like they have big eyes, but it’s just their body’s color structure. The truth is they have small ones.
There are also some dolphin species that we may have encountered, like the bottlenose dolphins. We might also want to know more about these dolphins like striped, dusky, Fraser’s, white-sided, spinner, and Arabian. Each dolphin species has different characteristics that we also need to consider before getting along with them.
Some species are endangered or extinct due to human activities. We can’t blame some of these because they consume it, and others use it to live. Some causes of this danger are commercial fishers. That accidentally caught, and while being stocked on the nets, they lost their breathing.
Dolphins Enemies
The worst living mammal on earth “Humans” catch these mammals for so many reasons like eating its meat, and others put these sweet creatures in a cage to be watched by a crowd of people. And it’s hard to stop this unless somebody or the people themselves think of alternative ways to live.
Sharks! Sharks eat even dolphins when they starve, but sometimes it will take a lot of time for the sharks to catch one since dolphins are smart mammals, but still, sharks have a typical hunting instinct that makes them win. You can’t blame the rule of nature because it’s part of their food chain. But there is the fact that they are using the nose to attack and can even kill sharks.
Highly Intelligent Mammal
Like humans, dolphins are mammals that have warm blood and nurses their young. Dolphins have significant and complex brains. They are also known as the second most intelligent next to humans. As we can see in marine sanctuaries or parks, dolphins are swift learners when trained.
Dolphins have large brains, and they use it to solve problems, analyze, and survive in the wild. They sleep with one eye closed to allow one side to watch for predators, not fall asleep, and avoid drowning while taking a nap. They make sounds and echoes to determine the direction and distance of a thing.
Dolphin Communication Skills
If they are well trained, they can do many tricks like playing a ball, making an impressive high jump, landing a beautiful dive, and a lot more that we usually see in amusement parks. There is also a particular place that these mammals help people catch fish. They move the fish going to the fishing nets so that people will have many catches.
Training them is much more like training a dog, but dolphins might be a lot smarter. There are many ways to make good communication with them. They are using hand gestures, different tones of whistles, and more. They make it more useful and easy if you treat it like giving fish or hugging them to show appreciation after completing a specific command.
Based on research, bottlenose dolphins communicate through squeals, clicks, whistles, and other sounds. Some can process and send identity information through those sounds. They also use sound waves and echoes to locate an object, also called echolocation, that makes dolphins more attractive to humans.
We Have To Protect Dolphins Now!
No matter how fun and friendly dolphins are to humans like using them for recreation or other human activities, we have to bear in mind that some dolphins are endangered and possibly extinct like the “Baiji” species, due to social interventions. Also, attempting to feed or feeding wild marine animals is illegal. We have to preserve our sea creatures, or they might all go extinct. We have to teach future generations the importance and impact of these wild marine animals on our ecosystem.
