Spinner Dolphin

Spinner Dolphins belong to the family Delphinidae. Dwelling in the Pacific Island Region, the Spinner Dolphin is the most encountered cetacean. There are 4 subspecies of spinner dolphins described worldwide. Their physical features are very similar to the bottlenose dolphin I have previously written about. These dolphins however are smaller in size. The female Spinner dolphins are 4.5 to 6.7 ft. long and the males are 5.3 to 6.8 ft. long (compared to the bottlenose who can get up to 13 ft.). If we were to compare weight to a bottlenose dolphin, the Spinner dolphin only gets up to about 180 lbs. while the bottlenose can weigh up to 1,400 lbs.! The Spinner Dolphin doesn’t get called the Spinner Dolphin for no reason. This creature is known for its acrobatic leap out of the water. This dolphin can leap out of the water and spin at least 7 times before falling back into the water! Since this species is a night hunter, it needs to have rest at some point. What’s cool about their behavior is that they will swim in a unit, swaying back and forth in a sort of trance for 4-5 hours daily. They will rely more on their vision than echolocation like other animals. For that reason, their resting period is done on sandy-bottom areas so that predators are more visible. After their resting period, they burst right back into full energy! It was observed that they will swim in a “zig-zag” pattern toward deeper waters and then return to shallow waters using the same zig-zag pattern. Researchers believe this constant pattern is a short of social cue to help with the coordination of their movement into the deeper seas.

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