The Anatomy of a Dolphin

Dolphins, cousins to whales, member of the family Delphinidae, and an animal that captures the heart of anyone who sees one. This powerhouse of a marine mammal can swim at speeds of up to thirty-five miles per hour and renowned for the fact that they can jump out of the water, a feat meant to both conserve energy and to get places quicker. When they swim, they are as graceful as a swan and as playful as a little child. Well, read on to find out more about these amazing creatures.
When you see a dolphin, you are in awe, but what sort of questions do you ask? How do they swim so fast, what do they eat, where do they live? First, the anatomy of a dolphin. We’ll start with a dolphin’s teeth. Dolphins have eighty to one-hundred cone-shaped teeth. These teeth are set up in a position to interlock and hold slippery fish in its mouth. Because the teeth interlock like that, and the teeth are as sharp as they are, dolphins cannot chew their food. Therefore, they must result to swallowing their food whole. To a dolphin, an open mouth is a sign of aggression, and clapping jaws are an even greater sign of aggression. This rarely happens unless it is during mating season because dolphins talk without opening their mouth.
Dolphins have many ways of defending themselves from predators in the wild. One of which is pretending to be dead. This can scare away some predators, but predators like sharks might take this as a sign that it is fine to feed now! To protect themselves while sleeping, they close one eye and leave the other eye open as well as one side of the brain stops and sleeps while the other side doesn’t. This is useful in multiple ways. Dolphins have to remember to breath or else they will die, so the fact that one side of the brain is ...

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...n years can’t even start speaking to dolphins. What is even more astounding is that dolphins even have their own names! A few months after they are born, they make up a series of clicks, whistles, or both, to make themselves their own dolphin name! It just goes to show you how smart these animals can be.
Where do you see dolphins the most, a river, the nearby lake? If you see one there, something is very wrong if you are in North America. South America might be fine, but usually dolphins live in the ocean. Forty types of dolphins live in the ocean while at least four different types live in freshwater habitats. The Bottlenose Dolphin, the Spinner Dolphin, and the Orca are all dolphins who live in saltwater habitats. Usually dolphins live in shallow water where you can see the bottom. Freshwater dolphins usually live in large rainforests like the Amazon Rainforest.