Bottlenose Dolphin
Bottlenose Dolphin
Mammal
A clever, playful sea mammal that hunts by sound and lives right around the coasts of Britain.
💡 Fun Facts
- It 'sees' with sound, sending out clicks and listening to the echoes to build a picture of the world around it in dark or murky water.
- These clever dolphins are not only ocean animals — a few live around Britain all year, in the Moray Firth in Scotland and Cardigan Bay in Wales.
- Their clicks are among the loudest sounds made underwater, measured on a special underwater scale you cannot compare to sounds in air.
Name Story
Tursiops truncatus
means “the blunt-snouted dolphin-face”
What does its name mean?
- Tursiops — dolphin-like (face/appearance)Latin tursio 'a dolphin-like fish' (Pliny) + Greek ōps 'face, appearance'
- truncatus — cut off, truncated — the short, blunt snoutLatin truncare 'to cut off'
The name paints its face: 'dolphin-like' with a snout that looks 'cut off' short and blunt — the rounded, bottle-shaped nose that gives this dolphin its everyday name.