Common dolphin
Delphinus delphis
— Where the name comes from
From the Greek delphís, related to delphýs, “womb”. To the Greeks it was “the fish with a womb”: the only sea creature they had seen give birth to live young. The name already contains the intuition that it was not a fish at all.
— Facts
- Group
- Mammals · Mammalia
- Order
- Cetaceans
- Habitat
- Temperate and tropical pelagic waters
- Range
- Atlantic, Pacific, Mediterranean
- Size
- 170–240 cm, 70–110 kg
- Diet
- Carnivore — oily fish, squid
- Lifespan
- 25–35 years
— Characteristics
- 01
Echolocates by clicking and reading the returning echo: it “sees” the inner density of things.
- 02
Lives in groups that can run to more than a thousand individuals.
- 03
Every dolphin develops a signature whistle that works as a proper name.
— What sets it apart
The dolphin never sleeps entirely: one brain hemisphere at a time goes into deep sleep while the other stays awake to manage the rise to the surface to breathe, with the opposite eye open. Unihemispheric sleep — sleeping with half a brain so as not to drown in the other half.
