My Own My Own Study Of Dolphins!!

Below Is Just Some Stuff I Found On Diffrent Websites... I Just Copied A Few And Put Them In This Post Hope You Enjoy!!Dolphins are mammals; this means that they nurse their babies with milk from the mothers.Dolphins can swim up to 260 m. below the surface of the ocean.
Dolphins can stay up to 15 minutes under water, but they cannot breath under the water.
Dolphins use a technique called echolocation to find food and navigate.
Dolphins live in groups formed by 10 to 12 individuals.
There are 36 different kinds of ocean dolphins and 5 species of river dolphins.
The largest dolphin is the “killer whale” (also known as Orca).
The most known dolphin is the “ bottlenose dolphin”.
Dolphins are warm-blooded.
Dolphins communicate through sounds and whistles.
Dolphins eat fish and squid.

Dolphin Anatomy

Dolphins may live in the ocean, but they’re mammals that are fully adapted to live in water.


There are a number of adaptations that dolphins developed during their creation living in water instead of on land. For instance, dolphins and other cetaceans have no hair whatsoever, with the exception of a few follicles on their lower jaws and snouts.




Dolphin Senses


Probably one of the most important difference between land mammals and dolphins is the way they vocalize.

While most mammals have a larynx or a similar structure that allows them to vocalize using throat vibrations and exhaled air. Dolphins and other cetaceans are no different; but they’re specially adapted to make extremely high-pitched sounds used for echolocation as well as more human-pitched sounds used for ordinary communication with others in their pod.


In addition, dolphins have extremely sharp hearing, and much better vision than one might expect of an animal that uses echolocation as its primary means of sensing the world. Dolphins can see limited colors, and even have limited binocular vision like a primate. They do not possess much of a sense of smell, however.
Swimming
One of the most interesting differences between cetaceans and fish is in their swimming method. Fish swim by wiggling left and right, and if you watch crocodiles and snakes you’ll see the same motion. But because dolphins were descended from mammals with a quite different skeletal structure, they use up and down strokes to swim.
Today you can still see some of the remnants of terrestrial mammals in the dolphin’s skeletal structure. For instance, they have forelimbs, but they’re adapted into flippers with shortened arm bones and no fingers. Hind limbs can sometimes be found as vestigial skeletal remains, much like tails can still be found vestigially on some humans. Most cetaceans, including dolphins, still have a pelvis, which is entirely absent from fish.


Unlike other mammals, a dolphin’s hind quarters are much, much more developed than its front musculature; the flippers are only to steer, while the tail provides most of the force of motion. Dolphins have also developed horizontal flukes on their tail to make propulsion more efficient, and they’ve developed a dorsal fin just like fish. External parts that get in the way of a dolphin’s streamlined shape, like the genitalia or the ears, have been entirely lost, turning into internal organs instead.


Breathing


Dolphins, like other mammals, breathe air instead of water, and thus use lungs instead of gills. A dolphin that cannot surface also cannot breathe, and thus will drown; this is why dolphins caught in fishing nets are given such a poor chance of survival. Unlike most fish, dolphins are very much creatures of the surface of the ocean.


Like whales and other cetaceans, dolphins respire through a blowhole in the tops of their heads, breathing in air when they break the surface of the water. Unlike humans, dolphins do not breathe reflexively; instead, they have to remember to breathe. An unconscious dolphin is likely to be a dead dolphin. Though when actively swimming they must breathe fairly often, dolphins can hold their breath for fifteen minutes or more.

Dolphin Sound Diversity

Most people have heard the chirping, squeaking noises made by dolphins which they use to communicate with dolphins and human trainers, and to navigate by using echolocation, or figuring out where things are by bouncing sound off them. Did you know dolphins can use their echolocation to detect three-inch objects further away than the length of a football field? Or that the possibility of true language exists, according to the theories of some researchers?

Do Dolphins Have Language?

Whether or not dolphins have language is a matter for debate unless and until we humans figure out how to speak to them. But evidence is mounting that dolphins may indeed have their own language.


Pods of dolphins in the English Channel stay on their own side – the French-water dolphins on the France side and the English-water dolphins on the England side – even though they are of exactly the same species and might be expected to mingle more. Some researchers say that this indicates not just language, but that two groups have developed distinct language that can’t be understood by the others.


Whether you buy that or not, there is a lot of research on dolphin vocabulary that indicates they communicate with at least as much sophistication as the higher apes. They have a vocabulary of danger sounds, food sounds, and seeking sounds, and sometimes put these sounds together in a reasonably complex fashion. There is also evidence that they may greet one another by name; specific sounds are only uttered when meeting certain dolphins. Dolphins and Man-Made Sonar


dolphin echolocation abilities are much superior to those of any man-made device. For this reason, the US Navy have been studying them for years in order to improve their own sonar. What they’ve found has been surprising.

Dolphins are incredibly good at distinguishing their own echolocation sonar even in very noisy underwater environments – and in fact are very good at locating the drift nets that entangle and kill so many of them, raising the question of why they are still often trapped in them. It has also been found, though, that some noisy locations confuse dolphins, perhaps explaining why dolphins often ground themselves in areas where Navy ships using active sonar are performing maneuvers. Could the clumsier man-made sonar be using frequencies the dolphins associate with something else? Or perhaps it’s like looking into a strobe light for them. Whatever the explanation, the Navy is interested in eradicating the problem.

Dolphin Beaching

It’s the most tragic thing a dolphin lover can see: a pod of dolphins that have apparently killed themselves by swimming onto a beach and lodging themselves there. Why do dolphins do this?

The most prominent theory currently is that something confuses their echolocation, “blinding” them to the location of the beach in relation to the open ocean. Since many beachings happen near man-made sonar activity, it’s possible that this impacts them. Some very recent autopsies of beached dolphin bodies show a very high percentage of damaged hearing, suggesting that a very powerful sound somewhere may have basically blown out their hearing. Dolphins see quite well, but without their ears they are disoriented and blinded. And when one dolphin beaches itself, the others are at risk because they will try to help him

However a beaching is initiated, it’s likely that it has much to do with how a dolphin perceives sound. Hopefully, we’ll soon understand enough about dolphin hearing to be able to prevent these tragedies.

Dolphin Language and Communication

Dolphins are like the kid that won’t shut up. They are almost constantly making sounds of one of two kinds: communicative or navigational. The different sounds are made in different ways.

Echolocation sounds are produced in their nasal passages just below their blowholes, and are called clicks. Clicks are sometimes produced in such rapid succession that they sound like buzzes or even quacks, and beamed forward from the dolphin’s head. These sounds are produced just behind the melon, an oily, slightly off-center lump on what you’d call the dolphin’s forehead, and the sound waves are focused forward through it.

Scientists are not entirely certain how the melon works, but it does seem to amplify and clarify the dolphin’s echolocation sounds, and may play a part in collecting the sounds bouncing back. They allow a dolphin to detect remarkably detailed information from the world around them. In one test, a dolphin found a marble-sized sphere at more than the length of a football field. Some scientists speculate that echolocation sounds may also be used to deliver an acoustic shock to small prey.
In the larynx, dolphins can produce high-pitched whistles and squeals which can rapidly change pitch. Whistles are single tones, with no vibrations that make them sound like buzzes. As far as scientists can tell, the whistles are a form of communication with other dolphins, and squeals are used to express alarm or sexual excitement.

There have been vast studies done on whether dolphins communicate with language, some more reliable than others. Even major researchers have made some pretty far-fetched claims with little scientific data supporting their claims. On the other end, fisheries and others who depend on the deaths of dolphins to support their livelihoods tend to downplay the communication and intelligence of dolphins, sometimes equating them with fish.

The truth, as in almost every case with extreme opposing claims, lies somewhere in the middle. Dolphins are highly intelligent, and have a greater brain-to-body-weight ratio (important in determining real intelligence) than any other mammal besides homo sapiens. They have brain ratios twice the size of any of the great apes, and are estimated to fall in approximately the same category as australopithecines, early humanoid ancestors. The appearance of the dolphin brain is also startlingly similar to that of a human brain.

Like most other animals, dolphins do have communication. Their squeals and whistles communicate emotional states and, often, the presence of danger and food in the area. They may also help them coordinate “herding” processes. Dolphin females often act as “midwives” to new mothers, and every dolphin in the pod cares for the others.

But do they communicate linguistically? There’s some evidence for it. Dolphins tend to stay within their own pods, and may have trouble understanding “foreign” dolphins. In studies done on dolphins near Scotland, individuals appear to have names; or at least, other dolphins use specific and unique whistles only in the presence of certain other dolphins, as if calling them by name. Unlike any other animal besides humans, dolphins exhibit a great tendency to take turns when vocalizing – making their communications sound like a conversation.

There have also been very basic linguistic studies of dolphin sound patterns. According to some studies, dolphin sounds follow the same basic patterns of all human-based language, from Morse code to Chinese. Though we cannot understand what they’re saying, it’s not beyond the bounds to state that dolphins may indeed have language, though it’s certainly a language unlike any we know today.

Dolphin Echolocation

Echolocation is a technique used by some animals to detect other animals, food and obstacles.


As implied by its name, this technique uses the echo, produced by a sound emitted by the animals with this capability, to locate such objects.

Dolphins and some whales, besides some other animals, like bats, have this ability.

Dolphin Echolocation. Dolphins make a sound that travels quickly through water. The sound is bounced back and the information decoded in the Dolphin Melon.

The sound travels in the form of waves and when it is bounced back by solid objects either in water or air, it is then detected by the dolphin. This bouncing is called “echo” and it is the same as the voice echo we hear in caves, but at a much precise level.

Animals with echolocation ability, are capable to detect this echo when is deflected back by a solid object.


In the case of dolphins, they emit a a beam of clicking sounds forward in the direction fo their head and receive the echo from this sounds in the lower jaw.

This sophisticated system can calculate the distance where an object is located because of the time taken by the echo to return to the dolphin. As sounds can travel quite a distance in the water, dolphins are capable to detect dangers or food which is even out of sight.


This technique is used by humans in radars or sonars where some kind of wave is emitted and the bounced back wave is detected and processed.

Dolphin Sophisticated Senses

Imagine a world of darkness and sudden light, a world in which you can move not only side to side but up and down as well, a world without a bottom to it but instead a top to which you must periodically rise. And then imagine a world in which your hearing tells you as much about where you are and what’s around you as your eyes do, and often more.

This is the world a dolphin lives in. Though dolphins have all the same senses we do – sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound – they don’t work the same way. And they have an additional sense of echolocation. It’s also been postulated that they can orient themselves to magnetic fields.

Dolphin Sight
Dolphins have surprisingly good vision, able to see a fish in a trainer’s hand well enough to snatch it from the hand without harming the trainer. They have binocular vision to a certain degree, like a human does. They don’t have great color vision, though; it’s comparable to a severely color-blind person. And why would they need it when they live most of their lives well underwater?

Some dolphin behaviors associated with their vision indicate high specialization of the two sides of the brain, which is associated with intelligence. For instance, dolphins tend to swim in a counterclockwise direction in tanks. And when presented with new visual stimulation, like new people, they tend to look at them with their right eyes.

Dolphin Hearing and Echolocation

More important to a dolphin than sight, however, is dolphin hearing. Blindfolded dolphins have been found to have no trouble locating surprisingly small items in their tanks by using echolocation.

Whaling ships have long known how sensitive the hearing of any cetacean is. They always went as silent as they could when stalking whales; any sound in the water could lead to loss of their catch. Dolphins are no different from whales in this respect. Though their echolocation sounds don’t seem all that loud to a human, they can hear the bounced-back sounds from tiny objects as far off as 120 yards.

Dolphins may have two hearing sense organs. The melon of a dolphin (you can see this – it’s the big off-center lump on their foreheads) focuses their echolocation sounds, and may have just as much to do with collecting the sounds bounced back from echolocated objects. They do also have regular ears, and their ability to hear is among the best in the mammalian world.

Other Dolphin Senses

Dolphins are very sensory, and will seek out touch from other dolphins as well as from humans. They do not, however, have strong senses of smell or taste. Their primary sensory input comes from sound.

It’s possible that dolphins also can sense magnetic fields well enough to use the earth’s magnetism to navigate, although this is a poorly-researched area.

Some other cool facts and types of dolphins are:
http://www.dolphins-world.com/Dolphin_Life.html
http://www.dolphins-world.com/Dolphin_Intelligence.html
http://www.dolphins-world.com/Dolphin_Species.html
http://www.dolphins-world.com/Dolphins_with_Humans.html
http://www.dolphins-world.com/Dolphins_in_Art.html
http://www.dolphins-world.com/Dolphin_Pictures.html
http://www.dolphins-world.com/Dolphin_Videos.html