Dolphins & Their Unique Characteristics
The previous post was about the pink Amazon river dolphin and today we are going to look at dolphins as a whole. In total, there are 43 species of dolphins, 38 are marine dolphins while the other 5 are river dolphins.
Dolphins are by far one of the friendliest and cutest creatures on this planet. Their sweet personalities just make them even more adorable and loveable. These creatures are known for being friendly and playful with humans and also enjoy teasing other animals underwater. As if being friendly wasn’t enough, dolphins are also very caring. Dolphins travel in pods and when one of them is under the weather or injured, they will care and help one another.
The male dolphins are called bulls, females called cows and the kiddies are called calves. As you can tell, dolphins are very loving animals, their young stay with their mothers for 3 years but they can even end up staying for 8 years! Their average lifespan is 17 years but can also live up to 50 years!
These magnificent creatures are equipped with very delicate skin that can get injured quite easily but even though this is a crappy thing to have, their skin actually heals very quickly. Not only were they blessed with skin that heals quickly, they are also extremely intelligent.
Dolphins will use echolocation to find food and other object’s exact location. These creatures have 100 teeth and although they have so many teeth, they don’t use them to chew, they use them to catch prey and will swallow food whole, because they don’t have jaw muscles to chew. To make this even more creepy is that they have 2 stomachs!!!!! Yes, 2 stomachs! One is for digestion and the other is for storing food.
Dolphins don’t just enjoy diving, they are amazing divers and are able to hold their breaths for 7 minutes underwater so that they are able to explore.
These beauties have what they call a blowhole, which is located on top of the head. They use it to be able to breathe. In order to sleep, they have to sleep at the surface of the water so that their blowhole isn’t covered by water that way they’re able to breathe. These creatures are also known for sleeping with half of their brain still awake and alert.
A huge shocker in all this is that the killer whale is in fact a dolphin!!! The biggest dolphin!!
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