7 interesting facts about dolphins

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Knowledge is power. And a life hacker needs knowledge doubly. In this series of articles, we collect fascinating and sometimes unexpected facts about the world around us. We hope you find them not only interesting, but also practically useful.

The discovery of any intelligent beings is the innermost dream of mankind. We scrupulously study outer space to get an answer to the main question: are we alone in the universe? But what if our brothers in mind live very close, and we just do not notice them?

Dolphins are not fish

Despite the fact that dolphins live in the water and look like other marine inhabitants, they are much closer to humans than they seem. Dolphin is a warm-blooded animal that gives birth to cubs and feeds them with milk, rather than laying eggs. It has no scales, instead its body is covered with smooth and delicate skin. Even dolphin fins are designed differently. In the fins of dolphins, unlike the fins of fish, there are humerus and even something similar to the phalanges of the fingers. Most likely, dolphins once lived on land, but in the process of evolution they returned to the sea.

Brain

The brain of an adult dolphin weighs about 1,700 grams, while in humans it weighs 1,400 grams. But the size of the brain in itself does not mean anything, its structure is important. The study of these animals in a magnetic resonance imaging scanner showed that the total number of nerve cells and convolutions in the cerebral cortex in the dolphin is even greater than in humans.

Communication

As you know, dolphins communicate using sound signals of different frequencies, which remind us of whistling or clicking. According to the latest scientific data, dolphins can use about 14,000 different sound signals, which roughly corresponds to the vocabulary of an ordinary person. Each dolphin has its own name to which it responds. It was found that this name is assigned to the dolphin by the flock at birth and persists for life.

Habits

Dolphins do not usually live alone. Their flocks have a complex social structure, in which each individual has its own specific place. Dolphins are characterized by extremely mobile, inquisitive behavior. While most wild animals avoid human contact or show aggression, dolphins love to play and interact with people, especially children. They show benevolence not only to humans, but also to some other animals. In the entire history of observations, not a single case of a dolphin attack on a person has been recorded. Man attacks dolphins all the time.

Dolphin speed riddle

In 1936, British zoologist Sir James Gray drew attention to the tremendous speed (up to 37 km / h, according to his data), which dolphins manage to develop. Having made the necessary calculations, Gray showed that, according to the laws of hydrodynamics, it is impossible to achieve such a high speed with the muscle strength that dolphins have. This puzzle is called the Gray Paradox. The search for its solution, to one degree or another, continues to this day. At different times, various research teams have put forward different explanations for the phenomenal speed of dolphins, but there is still no unambiguous and universally recognized answer to this question.

The ability to regenerate

Dolphins have an incredible ability to heal themselves. In the event of any wound - even a large one - they do not bleed or die from infection, as one might expect. Instead, their flesh begins to regenerate at a rapid pace, so that after just a few weeks, there are almost no visible scars at the site of a deep wound, such as from a shark's teeth. Interestingly, the behavior of injured animals is practically the same as usual. This suggests that the dolphin's nervous system is capable of blocking pain in critical situations.

Official recognition

The Indian government recently removed dolphins from the animal population and designated them as "non-human." Thus, India became the first country to recognize the presence of intelligence and self-awareness in dolphins. In this regard, the Ministry of the Environment and Forestry of India has banned all performances using dolphins and called for their special rights to be respected.