More than a few features are shared by the 36 dolphin types. The marine mammals among them look like they're laughing and seem to enjoy playng.

COMMON NAME: Dolphins

SCIENTIFIC NAME: Odontoceti

SIZE: up to 32 feet

WEIGHT: Up to 6 tons

Dolphins are small-toothed cetaceans that can be easily recognized by their curved mouths, giving them a permanent "smile." There are 36 species of dolphins living in the ocean. Many dolphins are oceanic and live along coastlines in the ocean or brackish waters. There are a few species that live in freshwater lakes, however, such as the South Asian river dolphin and the Amazon river dolphin, or boto.

The orca, which also known as killer whale, is the biggest dolphin that can grow to be over 30 feet in length. The smallest of them, the Maui dolphin, is just five feet in length.

Dolphins feed primarily on fish and squid, a built-in sonar that bounces sound waves off prey and discloses information such as its position, size, and shape, which they monitor using echolocation. Up to 1000 clicking noises per second can be made by an echolocating bottlenose dolphin.

Behavior and reproduction

Dolphins are highly social mammals that communicate with squeaks, whistles, and clicks, living in pods that can number a dozen or more. Whether dolphins, like humans, have language is a question that scientists have explored for decades.

They have warm blood as mammals and nurse their young. Dolphins have more than one mate, and usually produce a single offspring that, depending on the species, can remain with the mother for up to six years.

Dolphins are agile swimmers that are streamlined and can attain speeds of over 18 miles an hour. In a boat's wake, they are often adventurous and sometimes frolic, jumping out of the water, probably for pleasure, talking or even shedding pesky parasites.

Threats

People have hunted dolphins for their meat and blubber for decades. Their biggest threat today comes from inadvertently being trapped in commercial fishing nets. Dolphins have to rise periodically to the surface to breathe, this avoids being entangled in nets, leading to drowning.

For Maine dolphins, warming ocean temperatures have forced some of their primary food sources to migrate into deeper, cooler water due to climate change. In addition, underwater heatwaves, often caused by climate change, tend to adversely affect the reproductive rates and ability of dolphins to survive.

In addition to hunting and entanglement in fishing gear, freshwater dolphins face the additional threat of dams fragmenting and degrading habitat.

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