- Do you think you know all the things from this list?
If you’re here for more bottlenose dolphin facts, buckle up.
- When dolphins inhale, they exchange about 80% of the contents of their lungs. (In contrast, humans exchange about 17% of the air in the lungs while breathing.)
- Dolphins don’t make any noise out of their mouth and don’t even have vocal cords. All the sounds they make to communicate come from their blowhole.
- Some play by creating bubble rings with their blowholes, then they spine them with their beaks and break them apart by biting them.
- Dolphins love to play in the waves.
- They breath through the blowhole on the top of their head, which has a flap of muscle that covers the blowhole when the dolphin is underwater.
- Dolphins usually surface about two to three times per minute.
- The average lifespan of a bottlenose dolphin is 45-50 years in captivity.
- Adult males live alone or in small groups of two to three dolphins and only join pods for short amounts of time.
- Dolphins are one of the few animals that can recognize themselves in the mirror. (And maybe cats? I think mine can..?)
- The clicks that dolphins make to other dolphins are part of a sonar system so the click reaches and object and the sound waves bounce back to the dolphin as an echo. This is how they know the shape, size, speed, distance and location of objects.
- Dolphins eat 15-30 pound of food each day, or about 5% of their body weight.
- A dolphin will use a signature whistle to call out to their group if they’re lost or isolated.
- Bottlenose dolphins are sometimes in groups as big as several hundred dolphins, called herds.
- Bottlenose dolphins can jump as high as 20 feet into the air.
- These females lives 5 to 10 years longer than males.
- Some dolphins gather around fishermen and their boats, to hunt with them.
- Dolphins can exhale air as fast as 100 miles per hour.
- Dolphins are social animals that have friends, hunt together and protect each other.
- Large species of sharks like dusky, great white and bull sharks hunt bottlenose dolphins but they otherwise don’t have any predators.
- Dolphins can hold their breath for up to 12 minutes.
- Dolphins squawk, whistle and click to “talk” to each other.
- Less than 2% of bottlenose dolphins will live longer than 60 years.
- Each dolphin has their own whistle which is like a human name and they use them for identification.
- Adult females and younger dolphins live in larger groups of about 15.
- Bottlenose dolphins need to swim to the surface to breath air.
- They use body language to be playful with one another, blowing bubbles, slipping their tails on the water and butting heads with each other in play.
- Bottlenose dolphins use echolocation when they’re hunting for food.
- Dolphins “talk” so fast, they can make up to 1,000 clicking sounds per second.
- Dolphins can remember the whistles of others they’ve lived with even after 20 years of being apart.
- They use their heads to push prey to shore.
- There are about 10-25 dolphins per pod.
- Dolphins usually travel and live in groups of dolphins called pods.
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