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SeaWorld Essay

Decent Essays

“Splish! Splash!” The sound of bottlenose dolphins jumping and swimming around their tank excites a family at SeaWorld as they wait to experience their first encounter with the dolphins. Every year, bottlenose dolphins bring joy to hundreds of people in both captivity and the wild, but what do people truly know about them? Bottlenose dolphins are actually unique and interesting creatures.
Bottlenose dolphins are one of thirty-two species of marine dolphins (World Book 297). Their scientific name is Tursiops Truncatus. Males are usually longer and heavier than females. Bottlenose dolphins can grow to be thirteen feet long and weigh up to 600 pounds (Bottlenose Dolphins). This makes bottlenose dolphins the largest of the beaked …show more content…

If a dolphin catches a large fish, it will smack the fish on the ocean floor or the water’s surface to break it into smaller portions (McClintock). After a dolphin catches its prey, it uses its tongue to swallow the fish and push the water out of its mouth (Dolphin Research Center). Dolphins can eat up to thirty pounds of fish in one day, so it is helpful that they have three stomach compartments, similar to that of a cow (McClintock) (Lockley 69). Bottlenose dolphins find fish by using echolocation. This is when a dolphin sends out a beam of short sonar pulses from its melon, or forehead. The beam reflects off of fish or other objects and echoes back to the lower jaw. The echoes are then sent to the ear bones where they are characterized. Using echolocation, dolphins are able to locate prey that is buried up to one and a half feet under the sand (Cahill 140-141). Bottlenose dolphins are excellent swimmers. They can jump up to sixteen feet in the air. Three to seven miles per hour is their normal swimming speed, but they can reach speeds of eighteen to twenty-two miles per hour. Dolphins also porpoise, which is when a dolphin swims fast enough to repetitively come out of the water and back under the water in one swift movement. This uses less effort than swimming fast at the ocean’s surface. When dolphins swim in deep open water, they often dive. They dive

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