Analysis of Dolphins
Aristotle once wrote, "The voice of the dolphin in the air is like that of the human in that they can pronounce vowels and combinations of vowels, but have difficulties with the constants." The dolphin is one amazing creature. Dolphins, whales and porpoises are all related. I am going to talk about all aspects off the dolphin from evolution and vocalization to behavior and intelligence. Dolphin fossils have been found dating back to 45–50 million years ago, which was during the early Eocene epoch era. The early dolphin or Protosetidae, back then did not resemble today's dolphin. It is suggested that a primitive mammal called Mesonychidae roamed the planes of Africa. This mammal started to become more...show more content...
Bottle–nosed dolphins average 8 feet and 500 pounds. The color of the dolphin ranges from black, white, gray, tan to even pink. Some have strips. Dolphins have a well–developed sense of hearing. The auditory nerve may have 67,900 or more cochlear fibers, which is twice as many as the human. They can detect sound frequencies of less than 1kHz if they are loud enough. The dolphin's sense of sight is also very good. A dolphin can see particularly well in the water. The sense of touch of a dolphin is also well developed. The dolphin has limited sense of smell. There is not a lot known about a dolphin's sense of taste. They do have taste buds, though they have not been studied enough to come to any conclusions. Dolphins do show preferences toward different types of fish though. They eat 4% up to 33% of their weight of fish, squid and shrimp daily. Dolphins feed by chasing fish onto mud banks and snapping them up while they are beached or by herding prey into clusters. Sometimes dolphins also follow shrimp boats to eat what was thrown overboard. Dolphins don't chew their food they just swallow it whole. Dolphins swim up to 19 miles per hour with bursts of up to 35 miles per hour. The tail of the dolphin moves in an up and down motion for movement with the flippers to stabilize. They swim in schools. Bottle–nosed dolphins have few members, under twenty. Others species have up to thousands of members in their school. Dolphins Get
