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Aquatic mammals and semiaquatic mammals are a diverse group of mammals that dwell partly or entirely in bodies of water. They include the various marine mammals who dwell in oceans , as well as various freshwater species, such as the European otter .
Marine mammal adaptation to an aquatic lifestyle varies considerably between species. Both cetaceans and sirenians are fully aquatic and therefore are obligate water dwellers. Pinnipeds are semiaquatic; they spend the majority of their time in the water but need to return to land for important activities such as mating, breeding and molting.
A great cormorant swimming. Aquatic locomotion or swimming is biologically propelled motion through a liquid medium. The simplest propulsive systems are composed of cilia and flagella. Swimming has evolved a number of times in a range of organisms including arthropods, fish, molluscs, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
A popular animal exhibit at the zoo, people love to watch these aquatic mammals swim, ... River otters, for example, don’t sleep in the water but find shelter on land, such as a cave or den when ...
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.
[27] [28] When swimming, river dolphins rely on their tail fins to propel themselves through the water. Flipper movement is continuous. River dolphins swim by moving their tail fins and lower bodies up and down, propelling themselves through vertical movement, while their flippers are mainly used for steering. All species have a dorsal fin. [23]
Aquatic animals generally conduct gas exchange in water by extracting dissolved oxygen via specialised respiratory organs called gills, through the skin or across enteral mucosae, although some are evolved from terrestrial ancestors that re-adapted to aquatic environments (e.g. marine reptiles and marine mammals), in which case they actually ...
Category: Aquatic mammals. 24 languages. ... Water shrew This page was last edited on 10 November 2023, at 00:35 (UTC). Text is available under the ...