Bottlenose Dolphin is the State marine mammal of South Carolina. It is also known as Porpoise. Bottlenose Dolphin was titled as South Carolina’s official State marine mammal in 2009. Tursiops truncatus is the scientific name of Bottlenose Dolphin, which is found Bottlenose dolphins can be found in temperate and tropical waters throughout the world. They are commonly seen in harbors, bays, lagoons, estuaries, around islands, and in large rivers.
State marine mammal of South Carolina the Bottlenose dolphins also found in the range from northern Japan and southern California, to Australia and Chile in the Pacific Ocean and can be found in the Atlantic and southwestern, Baltic, Mediterranean and Black Seas. The law entitling Bottlenose Dolphin as the official South Carolina State marine mammal is found in the General Statutes of South Carolina Code of Laws, Title 1, Chapter 1, Article 9, Section 1-1-712.
The State marine mammal of South Carolina facts—
- Common name: Bottlenose Dolphin
- Scientific name: Tursiops truncatus
- Length: Body length ranges from 6 – 12 feet. Males are usually a little larger than females.
- Weight: Adults have naturally weight in between 300 – 600 pounds.
- Color: The bottlenose dolphin is generally a dark gray on the upper part of its body and on both sides of the body is evaporation into a lighter gray while white to light pinkish color its belly.
- Diet: The bottlenose dolphin has usually eaten a wide variety of foods like fish, squid and crustaceans. Every adult dolphin can eat 15 – 30 pounds of food per day.
- Reproduction: Females give birth of one progeny per every two to three years. Calving occur at all times of the year with peaks in some where during the spring and fall. The gestation period averages 12 months.
- Lifespan: 40 – 60 years. . Females usually live 5-10 years longer than males.
South Carolina’s State water mammal, the Bottlenose dolphin has poor sense of smell, but excellent eyesight and well-developed sense of taste. They can learn plenty of things thanks to its large brain. It can be trained to detect mines and enemy divers in the water. Bottlenose dolphin uses echolocation to discover food and keep away from obstacles in the water. It generates clicks and gets information about size, shape and kind of substance in the water based on the reproduced sound. Bottlenose dolphin is a carnivore, which diet has been based on fish, crustaceans and squids.
Bottlenose dolphin frequently hunts in the group and pushes groups of fish toward the vicinity where they can be effortlessly caught. Being its carefree and playful behavior the Bottlenose dolphins are known as very social animals for. Habitually the bottlenose dolphins are living in a group that called pods, which may contain a few members or many hundreds when different pods meet up and join each another. State marine mammal of South Carolina, The bottlenose dolphin is generally a dark gray on the upper part of its body and on both sides of the body is evaporation into a lighter gray while white to light pinkish color its belly.
This counter shading makes them hard to see, when swimming. Males are, on average, somewhat larger and significantly weighty than females. In most parts of the world, the adults are about 2.5 m (8.2 ft), and 200 to 300 kilograms (440 to 660 lb). The size of the bottlenose dolphin are varies considerably with habitat. Bottlenose dolphins have short, thick beaks – that’s why they are known as “bottlenose”. They have 18 to26 pairs of cone-shaped sharp teeth on each side of the jaws. Bottlenose dolphins have great suppleness due to they have smaller quantity fused spinal column in their necks than other dolphins.
Reference:
http://kids.nceas.ucsb.edu/mmp/bottlenose.html
https://statesymbolsusa.org/
http://www.ereferencedesk.com/