Dolphin how fast

Bottlenose dolphins are very social. They can be found swimming in all of the world's warm, tropical waters, and have been known to approach and interact with humans. The bottlenose dolphin's friendly persona is further enhanced by a curved mouth that makes him appear to always be smiling.

Water is about times more dense than air, which means a dolphin must be able to generate a tremendous amount of power in order to swim fast. The dolphin's tapered body helps him glide smoothly through the water, cutting through much of the water's resistance. When moved in an up-and-down motion, the dolphin's muscular tail and wide flukes generate the power needed to propel the dolphin forward. By using the site, you agree to the uses of cookies and other technology as outlined in our Policy, and to our Terms of Use.

They are fish, but some give birth to live young. However, all sharks also breathe through their gills. Sharks' skeletons are made out of cartilage, not bones. Although there have been reports of dolphins giving birth to twins, they most often give birth to one calf at a time.

When two dolphins are born together, one usually doesn't survive. They can stay with mom until she gets pregnant again, between years. Gestation period is months. No, dolphins are very promiscuous. Males and females do not stay together; a calf will stay with its mother. Males are not involved in the care of calves. Cetaceans is a collective term for whales, dolphins and porpoises. The name is derived from the scientific Latin name of these animals: Cetacea.

Dolphins are marine mammals, but there is also a fish species that's often called "dolphin" or "dolphin fish". Its scientific name is Coryphaena hippurus. To avoid confusion with the mammal species its Spanish name "dorado" or its Hawaiian name "mahi mahi" is often used. Because of the confusion between the mammal and the fish species dolphins have in the past erroneously been called porpoises, especially in some US regions, where the fish species is common.

In older books you can encounter the name "bottlenose porpoise" for the bottlenose dolphin, for instance. Dolphins and porpoises are however members of different whale families. There is not really one smallest species. The killer whale Orcinus orca. Male killer whales can grow up to 9. Spotted dolphins get to be about the size of a grown human-between feet, up to pounds. When they are born, they are much smaller-usually between Bottlenose dolphins grow to be between feet.

The taxonomy of whales and dolphins is still subject to change. But in the most common view, the family of dolphins Delphinidae consists of 32 different species. Closely related families the white whales Monodontidae and river dolphins Platanistidae have 2 resp.

Most dolphins live in the ocean and the ocean water is too salty for them to drink. If they would drink sea water, they would actually use more water trying to get rid of the salt than they drank in the first place. Most of their water they get from their food fish and squid. Also, when they metabolize burn their fat, water is released in the process. Their kidneys are also adapted to retaining as much water as possible.

Although they live in water, they have live as desert animals, since they have no direct source of drinkable water. There are a number of dolphin species that live in fresh water.

They all belong to the river dolphin families. These are: the Platanistidae Ganges and Indus river dolphins , the Iniidae the boto or Amazon river dolphin and the Pontoporiidae the baiji and the franciscana. There is one species that can be found both in fresh water the Amazon river and in coastal sea waters: the tucuxi Sotalia fluviatilis. In general, salt water species don't do well in fresh water.

They can survive for some time, but they will be come exhausted since they have less buoyancy in fresh water and after a while their skin will start to slough like our own skin after spending a long time in the bathtub. Christoper Helm Publishers, London. The dolphin's fast cruising speed a traveling speed they can maintain for quite a while is about Energetic studies have shown, that the most efficient traveling speed for dolphins is between 1.

There have been reports of dolphins traveling at much higher speeds, but these refer to dolphins being pushed along by the bow wave of a speeding boat. Weihs At high speeds dolphins save energy by leaping. Nature : J. Rohr, F. Fish and J. Gilpatrick, Jr. Williams, W. Friedl, J. Chun Balancing power and speed in bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus in: I. Boyd ed. Marine Mammals - Advances in behavioural and population biology, pp. Symposia of the Zoological Society of London No.

Clarendon Press, Oxford. The deepest dive ever recorded for a bottlenose dolphin was a meters feet. This was accomplished by Tuffy, a dolphin trained by the US Navy.

Most likely dolphins do not dive very deep, though. Many bottlenose dolphins live in fairly shallow water. In the Sarasota Bay area, the dolphins spend a considarable time in waters that are less than 2 meters 7 feet deep.

Other whale and dolphin species are able to dive to much greater depths even. The pilot whale Globicephala melaena can dive to at least meters feet and a sperm whale Physeter macrocephalus has been found entangled in a cable at more that meters fathoms depth. Recent studies on the behavior of belugas Delphinapterus leucas has revealed that they regulary dive to depths of meters.

The deepest dive recorded of a beluga was to meters. Wood Marine mammals and man. Luce, Inc. Slijper Whales, 2nd edition. Revised re-issue of the publication: Walvissen, D. Centen, Amsterdam R. Wells, A. Scott The social ecology of inshore odontocetes. In: L. Herman ed. Cetacean Behavior. Martin Using satellite telemetry to aid the conservation and wise management of beluga Delphinapterus leucas populations subject to hunting.

If a single whale or dolphin strands, it usually is a very sick and exhausted animal. Such an animal often has some infections pneumonia is almost always one of them and a lot of parasites worms in the nasal passages are very common. Sometimes these animals can be rehabilitated, but often they are so sick they won't make it.

Some species of whales and dolphins occasionally strand in groups. A stranding of 2 or more animals is usually called a mass stranding. There are a number of theories that try to explain the occurrence of mass strandings. No theory can adequately explain all of them. In some cases it will be a combination of causes. They detect the beach only when they are almost stranded already and they will panic and run aground.

Dudok van Heel Sound and Cetacea. Sea Res. When the magnetic field is disturbed this occurs at certain locations the animals get lost and may run into a beach. Klinowska Cetacean live stranding sites relate to geomagnetic topography.

The way of the whale: why they strand. Wood The cetacean stranding phenomena: a hypothesis. In: J. Aubin Biology of marine mammals: Insights through strandings. The maximum age for bottlenose dolphins is between 40 and 50 years. The average age a dolphin can get the life expectancy can be calculated from the Annual Survival Rate the percentage of animals alive at a certain point, that is still alive one year later. This yields a life expectancy of about 25 years.

This yields a life expectancy between So the actual life expectancy differs per region. Spotted dolphins don't do well in captivity and because a wild study hasn't been done long enough to tell exactly how long they live we have to guess based on what we do know so far. Generally speaking, the larger the dolphin species, the longer it lives. The orca whale is the largest dolphin yes it's a dolphin! Keep in mind that these are estimates and are based on ideal conditions.

Sources: R. Scott Estimating bottlenose dolphin population parameters from individual identification and capture-release techniques. Hersch, D. Reeves: The Bottlenose Dolphin, pp. Bottlenose dolphins eat several kinds of fish including mullet, mackerel, herring, cod and squid.

The composition of the diet depends very much on what is available in the area they live in and also on the season. The amount of fish they eat depends on the fish species they are feeding on: mackerel and herring have a very high fat content and consequently have a high caloric value, whereas squid has a very low caloric value, so to get the same energy intake calories they will need to eat much more if they feed on squid than if they feed on mackerel or herring.

To able to see colors, the retina must have at least 2 different kinds of cones, with different sensitivities.

Most mammals have 2 types of cones: L-cones sensitive to long-wavelength light, red to green and S-cones sensitive to short-wavelength light, blue to violet or near UV. Humans and some other primates have 3 types of cones, giving them a better color vision. Only a few land mammals have only one type of cone, which means they are colorblind.

Most people walk at about 3. When dolphins want to go faster, they start jumping clear of the water, which is called 'porpoising' or 'breaching'. It may look like dolphins showing off when they 'porpoise', but they're actually saving energy by jumping clear of the water, because air has less drag than water. Why do dolphins chase alongside the bows of ships? One of the dolphins seemed a little more skeptical of the bubble curtain than the other, but with some coaxing from trainers, the marine mammals soon got used to it.

The results showed that a dolphin's tail, or fluke, is more than capable of producing enough thrust to speed the mammal through the water. The flukes are also flexible, which is key to enabling the dolphin to maintain a highly efficient way of swimming over a broad range of speeds. It could be that the fluke becomes stiffer the faster the dolphin swims, increasing its swimming efficiency at high speeds. Or maybe the dolphins can actively control fluke stiffness by changing the tension of tendons in their tail, he said.

Fish isn't sure how they're doing it, but the marine biologist and colleagues are in the midst of trying to figure that out.

All rights reserved. Flexible Flukes The results showed that a dolphin's tail, or fluke, is more than capable of producing enough thrust to speed the mammal through the water. Either way, "we can abolish Gray's paradox," he said. Follow Jane J. Lee on Twitter. Share Tweet Email. Read This Next Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London. Animals Wild Cities Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London Love them or hate them, there's no denying their growing numbers have added an explosion of color to the city's streets.

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