PopImpressKA Journal was really fortunate to experience an amazing experience to get connected to Dolphins, feel their energy and such love for us humans.
It is so rare that wild beings like Dolphins love us Humans so much that is our duty to listen and see how we can save those animals from so much trouble that they experience by human s that harm them. When you are in the water with those beings you can feel only love and feel completely safe, the amazing good energy that they transport and happiness is so unlimited. When you are in the water in Dolphins you do not think about your office job, about your rent, about how many bills you have to pay, only think is you are thinking is how amazing to get in contact with them.
You will never forget the experience when you swim with dolphins . Xcaret and Xel-Há give you the opportunity of sharing an amazing adventure swimming and interact with dolphins. With the special trained Guide you can learn and interract with those beings in the proper way. Xcaret Park is like a knowledge of our nature and wild life, the amount of live Macaws parrots is amazing, pink Flamingoes, amazing aquariums, turtles, crocodiles, jaguars, horses, donkeys, fish, butterfly garden, the birth of turtles and development of various nature species will make you feel about nature with more love, compassion and will to protect what is around you.
"LOVE YOUR NATURE AS YOURSELF, PROTECT IT AS YOUR OWN CHILD " PopImpressKA
SOME HISTORY AND INFORMATION ABOUT DOLPHINS:
BIOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY
All dolphins are toothed whales belonging to the sub-order,odontocetes, of the order Cetacea. As a group, dolphins are often referred to as "small" cetaceans, even though some of them are quite large, attaining lengths of over 20 feet. In addition, although the terms dolphins and porpoises are often used interchangeably, they really refer to two different types of animals.
Porpoises belong to the family Phocoenidae. They are generally smaller and more robust species. Most attain about 5-7 feet in length. Porpoises have no distinct beak, or rostrum. Their foreheads slope almost uniformly to the tip of their snout, and their teeth are spade-like in shape. The family Phocoenidae is rather small, and consists of only six members. There are no porpoises found in Hawaiian waters.
Dolphins belong to the family Delphinidae. Dolphins possess a distinct beak. Their teeth are conical in shape. Most species of dolphins are larger than porpoises, with the males usually being larger than the females. The family Delphinidae is the largest and most diverse family of the cetacean order and includes 26 living species. Several species of dolphins are found in Hawaiian waters.
Below is the biological classification for the common dolphin:
Kingdom Anamalia
Phylum Cordata (vertebrates)
Class Mammalia
Order Cetacea
Sub-order Odontoceti
Family Delphinidae
Genus Delphinus
Species delphis
In addition to being found around Hawaii, dolphins of some kind occupy virtually all oceans and major seas as well as some large river systems. Their distribution, however, is not random. Each species has become specialized to fit into a particular niche. A niche relates to all aspects of a species' way of life, including not only its physical home but also its food, behavior, predators and physical environmental factors necessary for its survival. In short, the niche defines a species' role within an ecosystem. For each dolphin species this role is unique.
In terms of their feeding habits, all dolphins are carnivores. Some feed exclusively on either fish or cephalopods (the class of marine invertebrates including squid, octopus and cuttlefish), while others have a more varied diet including fish, squid, crabs, shrimps and lobsters.
Like the other marine animals we have examined so far; the Hawaiian monk seal, the green sea turtle and the humpback whale, dolphins have become marvelously adapted to life in the sea. Anatomically, their bodies have become streamlined to move effectively in their aquatic environment. Their hind limbs have disappeared, their front limbs have developed into flippers, and their powerful tail provides their chief means of propulsion. While many claims have been made about the swimming speeds of dolphins, it appears that the rate of speed dolphins attain is closely related to their feeding habits. Coastal species that feed on slow moving prey rarely exceed speeds of 10 mph, and oceanic species that feed on fast-moving fish generally attain speeds of 15 mph, although bursts of speed up to 25 mph have been recorded. The way that dolphins are able to achieve such high speeds is by leaping from the water in a series of dives and spending as little time as possible under the water. This is known as
"running". Dolphins can attain greater speeds by riding the bow wave of a fast-moving vessel than they are able to on their own.
Another factor that increases dolphins' swimming speed by reducing their drag in the water is the smooth skin they possess. Unlike most mammals, a dolphin's skin is hairless, thick and lacks glands. It is also kept smooth by constantly being sloughed off and replaced. A bottlenose dolphin for example, replaces its outermost layer of skin every two hours. This is nine times the rate of human skin renewal. A drawback of their smoothness, however, is that their skin is easily scarred. Virtually all adult dolphins have an array of scars, notches and nicks that they acquired through interactions with companions, enemies or the environment. Scars on dolphins are so prevalent in fact that researchers often rely on them as a means of identifying individual animals. Like all other marine mammals, below the skin, dolphins have developed a thick layer of blubber to insulate them from heat loss.
The life cycle of dolphins is similar to that of other cetaceans. As mammals, dolphins bear live young and the mothers nurse them on milk and provide care. A dolphin calf is born tail-first with eyes open, senses alert and enough muscular coordination to follow its mother immediately. At birth, the mother helps her calf to the surface to get its first breath. While nursing lasts between one and a half to two years, the mother will remain with her calf for a period between three and eight years. There is some variation in the age at which sexual maturity is reached, the reproduction rate and the life expectancy among the different species of dolphins. Most species tend to bear one calf every other year or so during their reproductively active years and are believed to have an average life expectancy of about thirty years.
As anyone who has had the opportunity to watch dolphins perform in a show can attest, dolphins have an impressive ability to learn and imitate behaviors, often for what appears the sheer pleasure of doing so. This observation, together with their large brain size, has led to numerous studies of dolphin intelligence. Dolphins' brains are about the size of our own. Size alone, however, is not always a reliable indicator of intelligence. Elephants, for example have brains four times the size of humans, but we do not consider them to be four times as smart! Scientists believe a more accurate factor in determining a species' level of intelligence is the ratio of brain weight to spinal chord weight. In fishes, the brain weighs less than the spinal chord; in cats the ratio is 5:1; in apes, 8:1; in humans, 50:1; and in bottlenose dolphins, about 40:1, suggesting that dolphins have a level of intelligence comparable with humans.
Another characteristic used to determine the level of intelligence is the amount of folding in the cerebral cortex, the portion of the mammalian brain associated with thinking and reasoning. A cerebral cortex which is more deeply folded has a greater surface area available for thinking. Some species of dolphins have brains that are more deeply folded than human brains, although the cortex itself is not as thick. The level of folding in dolphin brains again suggests that they have a level of intelligence comparable to ours.
When discussing the intelligence of dolphins, or other species for that matter, it is important to realize that the environment in which they live is often very different from our own. We must be careful not to place our standards of intelligence on other species, or assume that they "think" the same way we do. Dolphins may require completely different types of mental abilities for survival in their watery home. Sound and light, for instance, travel very differently in water than they do in air.
Earthtrust's Project Delphis actively explores dolphin cognition from its underwater laboratory in Hawaii.
The speed of sound in water is roughly four times greater than it is in air. In addition, sound waves are able to bend around corners and pass through objects and can be detected at any time of the day or night. On the other hand, water is much worse for vision as vision depends on the presence of light, and the sea is generally dark and shadowy except for regions near the surface. Although dolphins are believed to have fairly good eyesight, their visibility is often limited by their dark and murky environment. Not surprisingly, dolphins and whales have come up with an efficient way to combat this problem. They tend to rely chiefly on their sense of hearing to understand the world around them, much as humans rely on a combination of sight, sound and smell.
Dolphins and many species of toothed whales use their sense of hearing in a very sophisticated behavior known as echolocation. Echolocation is a process where a dolphin emits a steady series of split-second "clicks" through its blowhole. The "clicks" are pulses of ultrasonic sound (sounds repeated as rapidly as 800 times/second) produced in a dolphin's nasal passages and focused in a large, lens-shaped organ in the forehead known as the melon. The melon concentrates the sound pulses into a directional beam. When the outgoing sound waves or "clicks" bounce off objects in their path, a portion of the signal is reflected back to the dolphin. The bony lower jaw of the dolphin receives the incoming sound waves and transmits them to the inner ear where they are converted into nerve impulses and then transmitted to the brain.
Through echolocation, a dolphin is able to determine the distance of a target on a continuing basis by measuring the time between emitting the clicks and their return. Dolphins regulate their rate of click production to allow the returning "echo" to be heard between outgoing clicks. Using this amazing skill, a dolphin can create an acoustic picture of its surroundings and can determine the size, shape, direction of movement and distance of objects in the water. This permits dolphins to hunt prey over a greater range than the limits of visibility allow.
Dolphins are characteristically very social creatures and often depend on social interaction for the purposes of hunting prey, defense and reproduction. Unlike humpbacks and other species of baleen whales, dolphins tend to form long-lasting groups that range in size from a few animals (2-40) called pods, to larger groups of up to several hundred members, known as
schools or
herds. Such groups may consist of more than one species, with little competition for resources, as each species occupies a different niche. Spotted dolphins and spinner dolphins are found living in such an association. Scientists believe this is possible because spotted dolphins tend to feed on larger species living near the surface, while spinner dolphins tend to feed at night on smaller species found in deeper waters.
Dolphins feed mainly on schools of prey. As a result, most species have developed communal and cooperative hunting practices, as searching for food as a group is more efficient than searching individually. There are some exceptions to this, such as the river dolphins that feed on individual prey on the river bottom. They are often found living alone or in very small groups. Most dolphins move in groups that are wider than they are long. This allows them to scan as large an area as possible using echolocation. The size of the groups may be determined by the number of dolphins able to be sustained by the school of prey.
Many dolphin groups appear to have rigid hierarchies of power with a few individuals considered dominant. Large groups are often mixed in terms of age and sex, but smaller groups are generally one of three types: 1) a nuclear group, comprised of a single adult male and female; 2) a nursery group, consisting of a number of females and young; and 3) a bachelor group comprised of adult and younger males. Regardless of the type, all groups of dolphins seem to have well-developed skills in cooperating and working together as a team whether it be for the purpose of finding food, mates or caring for their young.
In overall PopImpressKA Journal wants to educate people about this beautiful and caring beings that make our world beautiful and help us all to be kind and generous to each other. Be cautious about everything around you, Protect, Love and Care and our life will blossom with MANY GIFTS that GOD and Nature will provide.
