The most interesting creature of the sea was always dolphins. Dolphin often surprise us because of their intelligent behaviour.
Dolphins mostly show playful attitude, which makes them popular among humans. They can be seen jumping out of water, riding waves, and in aquarium, they can be seen playing with a ball and interacting with humans while swimming. Apart from the fact that they are very friendly, we know very little about them.
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So from today's post, let's get to know some more about these beautiful creatures of the sea.
There are about 43 species of dolphins present all over the world, both in sea and rivers. Bottle-nose dolphins are the most common and famous type while killer whale dolphin is the largest dolphin whose length reaches 20 foot. Spinner dolphins can leap 20 feet high in the air from water, in fact it got its name by spinning and somersaulting above water.
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Research has found out that millions of year ago, they had legs and walked on land. Maybe that's why their fins are formed like legs. So our most closest sea creature was walking on land a few million years ago.
Dolphins being very social lives in a group of up to 12. The group is called pod. Female dolphins are called cows, male are called bulls and young ones are called calves.
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Dolphins communicate with sounds. They have upper hear limit 10 times more than humans. They analyze these sound codes with the help of their teeth.
They have good eyesight both below and above surface. They also use their sound hearing capacity to view far away things, this is called echolocation. They make sounds which travels and strikes some object to reach back to dolphin so that it can analyze how far is the object. They are very much dependent on their hearing capacity and developed it into an advanced sonar. Their sonar is better than those of bats and human made sonar.
Image Source: Pixabay
It is also believed that dolphins developed echolocation technology only a couple of centuries ago and they didn't had this technology always.
Dolphins have to come to surface to breath. While most mammals eat and breath from mouth, they have a separate blow hole for breathing. Their blowhole is on the top o their head.
While some species of dolphin have to breath in every 20 secs, others can keep the gap between breaths as much as 30 minutes.
The breathing of dolphins is not an automatic response like humans but they have to tell themselves when to breathe. This is why they have to develop their sleeping process.
Image Source: Pixabay
Dolphins structure is made in such a way that while sleeping, only half of its brain is asleep while half is still working. This helps dolphins to take breaths after regular intervals while sleeping. Also, it keeps its blowhole near surface while sleeping. They are never fully asleep that's why they never dream.
Dolphin is a carnivores sea creature. It has a set of 100 teeth, but it doesn't use them to chew their food. They use teeth to catch fishes and swallow their food as a whole. They can't chew their food because they don't have jaws.
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They also have two stomach like cows. One is used to keep their food and second is used to digest the food.
Being a smart creature, they can recognize themselves if they see a reflecting surface. This show that they have self awareness. They also give name to each other and call through whistles. It is believed that they will still recognize other dolphin name by their whistles if tone of their whistle changes.
In ancient Greece, dolphins were thought to carry souls to heaven, killing dolphin was considered blasphemy and was even punishable to death sometimes.
Image Source: Pixabay
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