Bottlenose Dolphin

The common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) is a widely distributed, highly social toothed whale and one of the best-studied marine mammals. It is listed as Least Concern.

🧬 Field Guide Specimen: Open Bottlenose Dolphin in the CRV Science Field Guide to log the specimen, see its place among the Mammals lineages in the Cladogram Explorer, and test your recall in the Red List conservation game.

Each dolphin develops a signature whistle that identifies it. In experiments, dolphins responded to recordings of a close associate's whistle by calling back, suggesting that whistles function somewhat like names.

Dolphins produce clicks in the nasal passages and focus them with the fatty melon on the forehead. The returning echoes are received through the lower jaw, giving a detailed acoustic image that can detect small objects at long range.

Dolphins sleep with one hemisphere at a time (unihemispheric sleep) so that they can surface to breathe. They live in fluid groups, cooperate to hunt, and in places like Laguna, Brazil, some herd fish toward fishermen's nets.

• Orca — the largest dolphin
• Blue Whale — a baleen whale