Bottlenosed Dolphins eats: squid, shrimp, eels, and a wide variety of fish.

These dolphins often hunt in teams herding small fish ahead of them, and picking off the stragglers. They eat approximately 6-7 kg of seafood per day.

They live in a habitat of warm, shallow, water, and will often play with people who go scubadiving.

Dolphins can live up to 50 years.

There are up to 40 different species of dolphins.

The bottlenosed dolphin is the largest of the beaked dolphins. Head and body length is 175-400 cm, with males being much larger than females. Pectoral fin length is 30-50 cm, and dorsal fin height is approximately 23 cm. Width of the tail flukes is about 60 cm. Newborn calves are 98-126 cm long and weigh 9 to 11 kg. The genus Tursiops is distinguished by the short, well-defnined snout or beak which is about 8 cm long and apparently resembles the top of an old-fashioned gin bottle. There are 20-28 sharp conical teeth on each side of each jaw, with each tooth about 1 cm in diameter. Tursiops also has a larger brain than those of humans, and shows a high degree of what humans consider intelligence.

They can sustain a speed of approximately 20 miles per hour, and burst speeds of 25 miles an hour.

Males fight viciously over females during the breeding season, and a hierarchy based on size is generally established in a group of males. The beginning of the brief pair bond takes place when the male shows a preference for the swimming company of a particular female and remains with her for prolonged periods of time. The male often postures in front of the female with his back arched and also strokes, rubs, and nuzzles her. Mouthing, jaw clapping and yelping are also part of precopulatory behavior. Courtship can sometimes be rather violent, with male and female bumping heads forcefully. Intromission is rapid (10 seconds, but may be repeated) and takes place underwater belly to belly when the female rolls over on her side, presenting her ventral surface to the male.

Protected under the Marine Mammal act of 1972, taking of dolphins is only allowed with a special permit. Because of commercial fishing operations dating back to the late 1800's, bottlenose dolphin numbers were drastically reduced by the turn of the century. The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service estimated that there were 3,000 to 10,000 bottlenosed dolphins off the east coast of the United States in 1981. The biggest threat now to dolphin populations is probably commercial fishing for tuna. Dolphins school with tuna and sometimes become trapped in nets set by fisherman.

You are probably thinking, what is the difference between a porpoise and a dolphin? Porpoises have a short beak or no beak at all, a triangular dorsal fin and spade shape teeth. But on the other hand dolphins have a pronounced beak, a factual dorsal fin, and teeth shaped like cones and mostly pointed. It turns out that porpoises are "smarter looking" than dolphins because they don't have a pronounced beak.

A dolphin's sonar is very complex. They may use it to find fish, locate an enemy, or to see in the dark. Dolphins send out high-pitched clicks which bounce off of objects the dolphin cannot see normally with his naked eye. They come back to the dolphin and, in it's brain, the dolphin gets an almost perfect picture of what is up ahead. Most scientists believe that dolphins have tough nasal plugs which, when rubbed up against the skull, produces the clicks. A dolphin's sonar is so complex it can tell the distance, direction, speed, size, and the configuration of the object the clicks bounced off.

The Orca (Killer Whale) is considered a dolphin despite its much greater length of 30 feet.

A Blue Whale's tongue is about the size and weight of a full grown AFRICAN ELEPHANT, and its heart is compared to the size of a volkswagon beetle.

References

http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/accounts/tursiops/t._truncatus

http://www.discover.net/~dolphin/Dolphin_Facts/dolphin_facts.html

http://www.whaleclub.com/index.html

http://www.waterw.com/~doxymom/dolplist.htm