The Bottlenose Dolphin.

Essay by DrJaysonCollege, UndergraduateA+, September 2003

download word file, 4 pages 5.0

The Bottle-nosed Dolphin is the most studied and generally the best-known species of dolphin. Bottle-nosed dolphins are classified "Tursiops truncates" in scientific name, and belong to the family Delphinidae, in the suborder Odontoceti, order Cetacea. These animals are well known for its intelligence and are commonly found in zoos or marine parks. In marine parks they can be seen perfroming clever tricks such as jumping through hoops 5 meters high due to their incredibly powerful tail. In addition, they can raise themselves upright out of the water and travel backwards, by threshing their tails.

Bottle-nosed dolphins can be found along the coastal regions of almost all tropcial and temperated coast, although offshore varieties also occur. In addition, the Bottle-nosed dolphin is called the "all-ocean" dolphin, meaning that it lives in every ocean. It is common for a school of 20 dolphins to live together in coastal regions, but school of 200 dolphins are found in the offshore verities.

These schools do not seem to have a leader and generally stay together for life.

The Bottle-nose dolphin is a carnivarous animal. Such sea creatures as shrimp, squid, small sharks, other vertebrates and fish are all a part of a Bottle-nosed dolphins diet. When they find a large school of fish, several schools of dolphins join up to form groups of up to 1000 dolphins. They work together to head and catch the fish. Another feeding method the Bottle-nosed dolphin has developed is chasing the fish on to mud banks and snaps them in the air.

Bottle-nosed dolphins are an extremely adaptable mammal. For example, the Atlantic Ocean form tends to be a little smaller and stockier with a shorter rostrum (nose) compared to the Pacific form. In Scottish waters, Bottle-nosed dolphins are chubby with a dark gray complexion, while the in...