INTRODUCTION The animal I have chosen for this task is the bottlenose dolphin. First thing you would think is what a bottlenose dolphin looks like well it has two flippers on the underside toward the head The worlds most intelligent animal. Dolphins are highly social animals, often living in pods of up to a dozen individuals. Generally, dolphins sleep with only one brain hemisphere in slow wave motion at a time. Dolphins are used to help people, there is one dolphin who works in the military with the men at war, this partial dolphin swims and finds bombs or if it sees anything that does not look right it swims back to the boat. It never goes to far away from its home (the boat). scientific name: Tursiops truncatus common name:
M Movement R Respiring S Senses G Grow R Reproduce MRS GREN MRS GREN, this term stands for movement, respiring, senses, grow, reproduce, excrete and nutrition. All things can be characterized as either living or non living. All living things must have oxygen, food or water and must move in some shape or form. A sheltered home or family is not a must in every organisms life style some organisms live alone and stay in the one habitat for there whole life before they die. E Excrete N Nutrition
FOOD CHAINS The bottlenose dolphin is a tertiary consumer that eats marine animals such as crustaceans, squid and fish. The only predators that dolphins have concerns about are certain sharks and killer whales because of there size advantage. Those who live closer to shore tend include bottom-dwellers organisms in their diets, while those who live out in the the open ocean will sometimes dive up to 500 feet to find food.
This is a dolphins food web!
LIFE CYCLE OF A Gestation Dolphins take about 12 months until the dolphin comes out of the womb. Childhood Once weaned, the young dolphin stays in the care of their mother for 3-8 more years. When they are 6 months old they can eat seafood, which consists of mainly fish and crustaceans. Bottlenose dolphins stay with there mum for 59.8% of there life before they go there different ways. Family Life Dolphins have a very sociable life and are very intelligent. They live in pods of up to 40 members and even some larger pods like schools. Most groups are split into subgroups, or young dolphins and the bachelor group - for young male dolphins. They have learnt the art of hunting in packs together, often attacking large schools of small fish and krill. Some people say that dolphins are more intelligent than humans. One of the big reasons dolphins are kept in captivity is because of how quick they learn tricks to perfume.
Kindom Animalia Pylum - Chordata Class - Mammalia Family - Delpinidae TAXONOMY Genus - Tursiops Species Tursiops / Trucatus
HABITATS Bottlenose dolphins live in a variety of habitats, from coastal waters to the open oceans all over the world. Bottlenose dolphins are found in temperate and tropical waters around the world. There are coastal populations that migrate into bays. They always travel with one or more partners. They like to live in oceans where the temperature is of 10 to 32 C (50-90 F). Because most of the earth s seas and oceans are their home. Just about the only salt waters where they can t be found are those in earth s arctic and subarctic regions. In spite of their very broad range, however, bottlenose Dolphins seem to prefer to stay along the coastlines of continents and islands, where the waters are shallower and the populations of the fish they prey upon are larger and where there is more food for the pod.
APPEARANCE Dolphins are highly intelligent marine mammals and are part of the family of toothed whales that includes orcas and pilot whales. They are found worldwide, mostly in shallow seas of the continental shelves, and are carnivores, mostly eating fish and squid. Dolphin coloration varies, but they are generally gray in color with darker backs than the rest of their bodies.
CLASSIFICATION The classification is a dolphin is even though they live in the ocean all of the time, dolphins are mammals, not fish. Like every mammal, dolphins are warm blooded. Unlike fish, who breathe through gills, dolphins breathe air using lungs. Dolphins must make frequent trips to the surface of the water to catch a breath. Other characteristics of dolphins that make them mammals rather than fish are that they give birth to live young rather than laying eggs and they feed their young with milk.
CHANGING HABITATS The main greenhouse gas being pumped out by humankind is carbon dioxide and it comes from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) which we use to power our factories. But we never think of the effect it has on dolphins. Research has shown that when the water the dolphins swim in over heats or the sun over powers it, this coarses the dolphins to find a new home. When there is shallow water the dolphins go and lie on the sand of a beach and after a very short and painful period of time the dolphins die of loss of water. Dolphins have no way to survive with out water. This I called beached when the dolphin swims up to the sand and does not move.
DICHOTOMOUS KEY Doesn't have flippers Does have flippers Ears Has some white fur Has 8 fins Has 3 fins No ears
ECOSYSTEM Dolphins are important to the ecosystem in the sense that they are apex or top-level predators which control populations of fishes and squids and keep the ecosystem balance. Lately, the bottlenose dolphin has been identified as sentinel of the coastal marine ecosystems, because their consume of a wide variety of fishes and squids, they concentrate contaminants in their bodies when there are high concentrations of contaminants in the water. Animals such as sea turtles,dolpins, sea urchins and fish act as consumers in the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem. Primary consumers in this ecosystem include zooplankton and herbivorous fish, while other fish that eat coral polyps or barnacles that eat plankton make up a group of secondary consumers. Large reef fish, sharks, eels and barracudas make up the tertiary consumers at the top of the food chain. Marine mammals such as dolphins and seals, as well as sea birds, also act as tertiary consumers. The Great Barrier Reef is home to over 1,500 species of fish, 4,000 species of mollusks and over 200 species of birds. This Is abiotic and biotic factor that our sea life gets effected by. Dolphins interact with living and non living creatures.
CONCLUSION FACTS ABOUT THE DOLPHIN Inclusion, these dolphins don t just have one classification and can live in multiply places all over the world. These mammals live under the water in cold and warm oceans all over the world. All so they live for a long 55 60 years until they die. Must female dolphins will at least have one calf before they die. If for some reason the female dolphin dies before the calf is a mature age so they can look after them selves the calf will probably just die. Bottlenose dolphins are one of the most intelligent animals that live in earth. Sea World uses bottlenose dolphins to bring attention to the theme park because of all the tricks they can do.
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