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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 ...
Marine invertebrates are the invertebrates that live in marine habitats. Invertebrate is a blanket term that includes all animals apart from the vertebrate members of the chordate phylum. Invertebrates lack a vertebral column, and some have evolved a shell or a hard exoskeleton. As on land and in the air, marine invertebrates have a large ...
Adult sea otters typically weigh between 14 and 45 kg (30 and 100 lb), making them the heaviest members of the weasel family, but among [3] the smallest marine mammals. Unlike most marine mammals, the sea otter's primary form of insulation is an exceptionally thick coat of fur, the densest in the animal kingdom. Although it can walk on land ...
Sea urchins or urchins (/ ˈɜːrtʃɪnz /) are typically spiny, globular animals, echinoderms in the class Echinoidea. About 950 species live on the seabed, inhabiting all oceans and depth zones from the intertidal to 5,000 metres (16,000 ft; 2,700 fathoms). [ 1 ] Their tests (hard shells) are round and spiny, typically from 3 to 10 cm (1 to 4 ...
Marine life, sea life, or ocean life is the plants, animals, and other organisms that live in the salt water of seas or oceans, or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. At a fundamental level, marine life affects the nature of the planet. Marine organisms, mostly microorganisms, produce oxygen and sequester carbon.
Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms that inhabit the sea. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather than on taxonomy.
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]