Dolphins

Here's a newer and more detailed version of dolphins. Please note that this picture is not mine! That means I did not take it, so I don't claim it as my own.

I went to San Diago SeaWorld the other day and I asked a fellow educator some information about dolphins, he said that dolphins can breed anytime as they want, when they reached sexual maturity at around 4 years old, just like us humans and they can live up to 40 years!!!

Dolphins, or the Delphinus Delphis are distributed in warm waters world wide and their length can go up to 8 feet or 2.4 meters long.

According to what I have learned in the Vancouver aquarium, dolphins can eat up to approximately 10 kg of food, such as fish, each day, that would be about 20 lbs. In the wild, dolphins sometimes won't eat for days, since hunting can be quite difficult and when they do hunt successfully, they would gorge themselves to make up the energy they missed.

Scientists can tell one dolphin from another by recognizing their dorsal fins, those are the fins that's on the dolphins's back, those fins are as distinctive as our finger prints, every dolphin's fin has a different shape, size and color.

The reproductive system isn't very visible, because they are inside the body (For both male and female.) in order to reduce resistance while swimming. Like polar bears and sea otters, male dolphins have a bone inside their penises. That's something quite interesting to know when I first learned that information. I was actually quite shy to hear about it.

By the way, did you know that dolphins can swim up to 20 mph or 40 km/h? That's really fast! They also have lots of teeth inside their mouths, there are 200 of them in total, how cool is that?

I also had a question that was asked in Facebook, she asked "Do dolphins drink the salt water in the sea?"

According to my knowledge, although there are dolphins in light waters as well as in sea water, but they indeed drink sea water when necessary. To avoid massive damage to their bodies, due to salt over doze, sea mammals, such as dolphins, sea otters, whales and so on, have VERY strong kidneys to get rid of excess salt that they do not need. Swim speed can get up to 40 kph.