Marine Mammals : Public Display And Research Essay

The Common Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus) are probably the most popular species of dolphins around. Coming under the order of Cetecea and the family of Delphinidae, the bottlenose dolphins are closely related to whales and are highly intelligent creatures (source 7). They are widely distributed around the world in the deep tropical and sub-tropical seas as well as other warm regions. For this reason, there is no recorded global estimate of the number of Bottlenose Dolphins in this world. According to source 9, it is regarded as a common cetacean, and too large and strong to be captured by accident.

Pink dolphins don't only make sounds only from their mouths. Unlike regular dolphins pink dolphins can bend like a dolphin doughnut. A dolphin doughnut is is when a pink dolphin touches its tail to its nose. A pink dolphin sleeps upside down like a dead goldfish. Dolphins have big flippers that allow them to crawl on land. According to the text, dolphins can locate objects by their echoes. This is called

The eating habits of the dolphin can vary by habitat, location and the food accessibility and availability. Bottlenose dolphins may eat many various aquatic organisms. Usually bottlenose dolphins eat fish and crustaceans. They also may eat octopus, mackerel, cod, herring, mullet, squid and eels, along with shrimp. The adult dolphins take in about four to five percent of their body weight in food each day! The average bottlenose dolphin will consume seven to ten pounds of food a day. Of course, the male will eat more than the female. A nursing mother will eat more than the standard dolphins; she takes in about eight percent of her body weight. When hunting for food dolphins may corner the prey in shallow water. The bottlenose dolphin will usually swallow the prey's head first. For larger fish, such as the impressive hammerhead shark, several bottlenose dolphins will kick it out of the water with their flukes. This injures and stuns the large fish and the

The main diet of the Southern Resident Orca’s is the Chinook Salmon (Taylor et al., 2013). Many chinook salmon populations have been listed as threatened or endangered, including those which have habitat cross over with the whales (Hilborn et al., 2012, p. 25 – 26). Ayers et al. 2012 used faecal samples to study

To determine the metabolic rate of a goldfish two different methods can be applied, direct or indirect calorimetry. Direct calorimetry analyzes the exothermic reaction when ATP is produced by measuring the amount of heat that is released. Meanwhile, indirect calorimetry measures the amount of carbon dioxide or oxygen because both are components of aerobic respiration, a process which repeatedly supplies more ATP to match the demands of metabolic rate of an organism. Evidently, metabolic rate is the cumulative sum of energy used by all the cells. Most of this energy comes from regulating homeostasis, locomotion and thermoregulation. On the other hand, ectotherms like goldfish have a slight difference in their metabolic rates because their internal temperature directly correlates with the temperature of their environment. For this reason, ectotherms use less energy because they do not need to worry about thermoregulation, maintaining constant body temperature. However, temperature, size, amount of light and stimulus are factors that can affect metabolism of goldfish. Thus, this experiment will measure the metabolic rate of goldfish through in

Bradshaw, C.J.A., Hindell, M.A, Best, N.J., Phillips, K.L., Wilson, G. and Nichols, PD. (2003). You are what you eat: describing the foraging ecology of southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) using blubber fatty acids. Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B. Biol. Sci. DOI 10.1098/rspb.2003.2371.

Manatees,also known as sea cows sometimes are vegetarian. Even though you would think that they would be carnivores due to their size and mass they are not. They mostly like to eat Lettuce and anything that's green.Manatees can eat up to 10 to 20 percent of their body weight each day. For a twelve hundred pound mammal, that means it can eat up

Bottlenose Dolphins are a very interesting animal. They have a fusiform (Spindle shaped) body that allows them to move quickly in the water. Because of the Dolphins’ shape they have bilateral symmetry. They also have a dorsal fin, flippers, and a fluke. However, Bottlenose Dolphins do not have ears on the outside of their bodies, hair, or hind limbs. The color of this type of dolphin is usually a light grey color to a black. Their stomach is white and sometimes has a pink hue. One physical adaptation these dolphins have is a telescoped skull. The skull is like this because it allows them to breathe more easily while swimming. Bottlenose Dolphins also have blubber that they use as insulation and vascular shunts that allow them to have cooling for certain types of organs and tissues in their bodies. Finally, Bottlenose Dolphins have sharp teeth that let them grasp onto their prey, so their tongue can push the prey down the dolphin’s throat. Bottlenose Dolphins have a range mass of 260 to 500kg which is 572.69 to 1101.32 in pounds. The average mass of the Bottlenose Dolphin is 400kg. Their average mass in pounds is 881.06.

The Navy Marine Mammal Program (NMMP), located in San Diego, California, has been going on for many years, beginning in the late 1950s, when the Navy began to study the unique attributes of marine mammals, such as their hydrodynamics. By understanding how certain animals maneuver in the water, perhaps the Navy could improve torpedo, ship and submarine designs (Marine Mammal Program). The Navy soon realized that dolphins would be valuable assistants to their divers working in the abyss of the open ocean. Unlike human divers, marine mammals are capable of making repetitive deep dives without experiencing “the bends,” or decompression sickness, a condition that arises from dissolved gases forming into bubbles within the body as a result from diving

The bottlenose dolphin has a broad diet that varies depending on its water depth. Those that live inshore typically feed on fish and other invertebrates located near the shoreline. Deepwater, bottlenose dolphins, on the other hand, typically feed on squid and fish in pelagic zones. Furthermore, bottlenose dolphins have differing diets depending on their geographic location. Bottlenose dolphins along the U.S. Atlantic Coast typically feed on the following: atlantic croacker (micropogonias undulatas), spot fish (Leistomos xanthurus), and silver perch (Bairiella chrysoura), whereas those found in South Africa typically feed on: african massbankers (Trachurus delagoae), olive grunters (Pomadasys olivaceus), and pandora (Pagellus bellotti). The

Bottlenose Dolphins By: Eve Lingard & Lilly Peebles Period 4- O'brien & Period 1- Prosser Mount Baker Middle School June 1, 2017 Abstract

The basic experimental design was that over 5 years researchers caught minkle whales and within 3 hours of death, analyzed the diet of the whale. They found the volume and weight of fore-stomach, verified what species the whale had eaten, and determined how frequent a species was eaten. The responding variable is the species found in the whale’s diet that year

3. In both areas, monitor and track the behavior with other marine mammals, movement, diet, and activities of each marine mammals. Keep a detailed and neat table of your findings.

“They spend about a year inside its mother's womb, and when they are born they weigh up to three tons and they stretch up to twenty five feet. It gorges on nothing but their mother's milk and gains about two hundred pounds every day for its first year” (National). “Females give birth to calves every two to three years. They remain pregnant for about one year before giving birth. When born, the blue whale calf is about twenty three feet long and weighs five thousand to six thousand pounds A nursing blue whale mother produces over fifty gallons of milk a day. At six months of age, they are an average length of over fifty two feet, and the calf is then disengaged from his or her mother” (Marine Mammal Center). This growth rate is astonishing and is probably the fastest in the animal kingdom

The wild seahorse population has been in decline for years, and to protect them we need to have a better understanding on how they reproduce. A study was performed to observe seahorse fecundity (the ability to produce an abundance of offspring; fertility) and egg quality, and the effects it has in their diet. There were two diets that were tested with “Hippocampus kuda females”, which is known as the common yellow seahorse. Diet one consisted of frozen mysis, which was the control for this experiment. The second diet was also frozen mysis, but it was enriched with liposome containing essential fatty acids. Over the duration of seven weeks, two groups of five females received the diet. Afterwards, the females and the males who were fed the control