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Marine mammals comprise over 130 living and recently extinct species in three taxonomic orders. The Society for Marine Mammalogy, an international scientific society, maintains a list of valid species and subspecies, most recently updated in October 2015. [1] This list follows the Society's taxonomy regarding and subspecies.
Marine mammals are mammals that rely on marine (saltwater) ecosystems for their existence. They include animals such as cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises), pinnipeds (seals, sea lions and walruses), sirenians (manatees and dugongs), sea otters and polar bears. They are an informal group, unified only by their reliance on marine ...
A common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus). A dolphin is an aquatic mammal in the clade Odontoceti (toothed whale).Dolphins belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontoporiidae (the brackish dolphins), and possibly extinct Lipotidae (baiji or Chinese river dolphin).
As the name implies, they tend to be found in the open seas, unlike the river dolphins, although a few species such as the Irrawaddy dolphin are coastal or riverine. The Delphinidae are characterized by having distinct beaks (unlike the Phocoenidae), two or more fused cervical vertebrae and 20 or more pairs of teeth in their upper jaws.
The Low Country Marine Mammal Network has studied a behavior among resident dolphins known as “strand feeding” that seems to be unique to the Carolina and Georgia coasts. The animals work ...
Cetacea (/ s ɪ ˈ t eɪ ʃ ə /; from Latin cetus ' whale ', from Ancient Greek κῆτος () ' huge fish, sea monster ') [3] is an infraorder of aquatic mammals belonging to the order Artiodactyla that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises.
The common dolphin (Delphinus delphis) is the most abundant cetacean in the world, with a global population of about six million. [3] Despite this fact and its vernacular name, the common dolphin is not thought of as the archetypal dolphin, with that distinction belonging to the bottlenose dolphin due to its popular appearances in aquaria and the media.
This herbivorous aquatic mammal lives in rivers, springs and shallow coastal waters. It was designated the state marine mammal in 1975 [229] and is protected by federal and state laws. Threatened by habitat loss, entanglements in fishing gear and crab traps, or by being asphyxiated or crushed by canal locks and flood gates, the most common ...