Bluefin tuna are warm-blooded. Because of this, they are capable of great speeds up to 50 miles per hour.
There are over 70 species of odontocetes, or toothed whales. These are animals that are often highly social, and include some of the most easily-recognized cetacean species, such as orcas, bottlenose dolphins and sperm whales. Image: m-louis, Flickr
It's hard to believe it's the end of April already! In case you missed it, here's some new content that I posted here in April:
Here's to a happy May!
Have you ever seen a spinner dolphin? I haven't (yet), but would like to. These dolphins received their name from their unique ability to leap and spin, which sometimes involves rotating their body more than four times (check out this video on ARKive to see this behavior). Their spinning displays can even be detected at a distance.
Spinner dolphins are a slender dolphin that grows to about 7 feet in length. They can weigh up to about 170 pounds. Their body has a striped appearance, with a dark back, lighter flanks and white underside.
Spinner dolphins are found in warm tropical and subtropical waters including in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Four subspecies of spinner dolphins have been designated, and these are the Gray's spinner dolphin (Stenella longirostris longirostris), Eastern spinner dolphin (S. l. orientalis), Central American spinner dolphin (S.l. centroamericana), and the dwarf spinner dolphin (S.l. roseiventris).
Learn More:
I've been working on some dolphin profiles this week - including profiles for Atlantic white-sided and Pacific white-sided dolphins - species you may encounter if you're whale watching in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, as well as the common dolphin, which was divided in 1994 into two species, the short-beaked common dolphin and long-beaked common dolphin.
Although these four species have distinct differences, they do have some things in common. They all may gather in huge pods, travel quickly and be entertaining to watch as they bow-ride in front of ships and leap above the water.
Do you have a favorite dolphin species?
Image: Pacific White-Sided Dolphin, Courtesy NOAA
Bilateral symmetry is the arrangement of an organism's body parts into left and right halves on either side of a central axis.
So, if you can draw a line from the head to the tail of an organism, and on either side, there are two halves that are mirror images, that organism exhibits bilateral symmetry.
Can you think of some types of marine life that exhibit bilateral symmetry? (One is shown here, and the definition below lists some more examples!)
Learn More:
Image: Gray Seal, Courtesy Johan J. Ingles-Le Nobel, Flickr
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