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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).
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.
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.
Risso's dolphin (Grampus griseus) is a marine mammal and dolphin, the only species of the genus Grampus. Some of the most closely related species to these dolphins include: pilot whales ( Globicephala spp.), pygmy killer whales ( Feresa attenuata ), melon-headed whales ( Peponocephala electra ), and false killer whales ( Pseudorca crassidens ...
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.
Wading and bottom-feeding animals (e.g. moose and manatee) need to be heavier than water in order to keep contact with the floor or to stay submerged, surface-living animals (e.g. otters) need the opposite, and free-swimming animals living in open waters (e.g. dolphins) need to be neutrally buoyant in order to be able to swim up and down the ...
Pantropical Spotted Dolphin by William F. Perrin in Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals pp. 865–867. ISBN 978-0-12-551340-1; Whales Dolphins and Porpoises, Mark Carwardine, Dorling Kindersley Handbooks, ISBN 0-7513-2781-6; National Audubon Society Guide to Marine Mammals of the World, Reeves, Stewart, Clapham and Powell, ISBN 0-375-41141-0