Georgia Arnold

November 15th, 2015

Science/English

Bottlenose Dolphin

The bottlenose dolphin, or Tursiops truncatus is a somewhat large, majestic grey mammal with a curved dorsal fin. They tend to live in warm, tropical oceans all around the world.  They are in the eukaryote domain, animalia kingdom, chordata phylum, mammalia class, cetacea order, delphinidae family, Tursiops genus, and truncatus species. They are endothermic heterotrophs which means they are warm blooded animals who rely on other organisms for food. A fun fact about the bottlenose dolphin is that they start swimming in their mother's womb. Another interesting fact about the bottlenose dolphin is that they can leap or jump as high as twenty feet above water. A functional adaptation is that they are very good at communicating. Their only predators are us and sharks, while they tend to eat shrimp and smaller fish. They have bilateral symmetry which means the only way they have symmetry is if they are divided down their center point.

I got my information off of http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bottlenose-dolphin/ as well as http://seaworld.org/en/animal-info/animal-infobooks/bottlenose-dolphins/ and lastly http://www.chesapeakebay.net/fieldguide/critter/bottlenose_dolphin