50 Fun Facts About Dolphins Trivia for Kids

Dolphins are not fish. What kind of animal are they?

They breathe air, are warm-blooded and feed their babies milk, just like you.

About how many kinds of dolphin are alive today?

They range from the human-sized Maui's dolphin to the 9.5-metre orca.

What is the hole on top of a dolphin's head for?

It is really a nostril that moved to the top of the head over millions of years.

What does a dolphin do when it breathes out through its blowhole?

On a cold day you can see the puff, then it sucks in fresh air and dives.

What is a dolphin's tail called?

It is flat and sideways, unlike a fish's tail which stands up and down, and the front flippers used to be arms.

What is the thick layer of fat that keeps a dolphin warm called?

All sea mammals have it, from seals to whales.

What is a group of dolphins called?

Pods change size all the time as dolphins come and go, which scientists call fission-fusion.

What sounds do dolphins make to talk and to find things?

They bounce clicks off objects and listen for the echo, which is called echolocation.

What is the fatty lump on a dolphin's forehead called, which helps focus its sound?

It works like a lens for sound and every toothed whale has one.

Which two animal groups are the best-known users of echolocation?

The word echolocation was coined in 1944 by Donald Griffin, who proved bats used it.

How do dolphins sleep without drowning?

The awake half keeps them breathing and watching for sharks, and one eye stays open.

Dolphins' hearing is so good that some can survive even if they are what?

Their ears work in both air and water, and echolocation lets them see with sound.

What do dolphins do for a friend who is hurt and struggling to breathe?

Dolphins form strong friendships and stay with sick or injured members of the pod.

How high can some dolphins leap out of the water?

They can also sprint at about 29 km/h in short bursts.

What shape are a dolphin's teeth, perfect for gripping slippery fish?

They eat fish, squid and shrimp, and porpoises have spade-shaped teeth instead.

In which state was the 1960s TV show about a clever pet dolphin and a park warden's sons set?

Coral Key Park was a made-up version of a real reef park in Key Largo.

Every dolphin has its own special whistle that works a bit like what?

Scientists call it a signature whistle, and other dolphins can recognise it.

Some wild bottlenose dolphins wear sea sponges on their faces. Why?

It is called sponging, it is a tool, and mothers teach it to their calves.

Bottlenose dolphins can live for more than how many years?

They usually cruise at 5 to 11 km/h but can burst up to 35 km/h.

Militaries have trained bottlenose dolphins to do what job?

They can also spot and mark enemy divers, thanks to their echolocation.

Which animal is the biggest member of the dolphin family?

Males can reach 10 metres, and their black-and-white saddle patches are unique to each animal.

Why did old-time sailors give orcas their scary nickname?

Since the 1960s people have switched to calling them orcas.

How tall can a male orca's dorsal fin be?

That is more than twice a female's, and hers is curved while his is a tall triangle.

Female orcas can live to what age, meaning up to six generations swim together?

Orca pods are led by grandmothers, and wild females average 50 to 80 years.

Which dolphins are the second-largest after the orca and are nicknamed blackfish?

They stay in the pod they were born into for their whole lives.

What is the spinner dolphin famous for?

It twirls around its long axis in mid-air and lives in warm oceans all over the world.

Which is the most abundant cetacean in the world, with about six million alive?

They gather in pods of hundreds or even thousands and have an hourglass pattern on their sides.

What colour do grown-up river dolphins in the Amazon turn?

They are also called botos, and they are the largest river dolphins at up to 2.5 metres.

Amazon river dolphins have unfused neck bones. What does that let them do?

When the Amazon floods, they hunt fish among the tree trunks.

Hector's dolphin lives only around which country?

It has a rounded dorsal fin some people say looks like a Mickey Mouse ear, and it is named after scientist James Hector.

What is the smallest of all whales, dolphins and porpoises?

It is a porpoise from the Gulf of California, and only a handful are left because they get caught in fishing nets.

How can you tell a porpoise from a dolphin?

Porpoises are actually closer relatives of narwhals and belugas than of dolphins.

The baiji, a river dolphin that is probably extinct, lived in which Chinese river?

Nobody has definitely seen one in more than 20 years, so it may be the first dolphin wiped out by humans.

Roughly how many kinds of whales, dolphins and porpoises are there altogether?

75 are toothed whales, which includes all dolphins, and 15 are baleen whales like the blue whale.

Which land animal is the closest living relative of whales and dolphins?

They split apart about 55 million years ago.

In the 1960s TV show Flipper, what was the name of the warden who owned the dolphin?

He and his sons Sandy and Bud lived at Coral Key Park in Florida.

Winter, the real dolphin behind the movie Dolphin Tale, was famous for having what?

She lost her tail in a crab trap line as a baby and lived at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Florida.

Which famous actor was in the 2011 movie Dolphin Tale?

He played the doctor who designs Winter's new tail, alongside Harry Connick Jr. and Ashley Judd.

Dolphins in the wild have been seen doing what with their babies?

In 2005 scientists in Australia watched bottlenose mothers show calves how to use sponges.

A dolphin called Moko once guided a stranded mother and her calf back to deep water. What were they?

Moko was a bottlenose dolphin in New Zealand, and the mother and calf had stranded in the shallows several times.

When are most dolphin calves born?

The mothers do all the work of raising them.

The word dolphin comes from an ancient Greek word that means what?

The Greeks knew dolphins gave birth to live young, so they called them womb-fish.

Orcas hunt in family groups led by whom?

These stable family pods are called matrilineal, and each pod even has its own dialect of calls.

What does an orca eat?

Different orca families specialise: some eat only salmon, others hunt seals.

Risso's dolphins are easy to recognise because their grey bodies are covered in what?

They get scratched up fighting each other and their squid prey.

Bottlenose dolphins have a brain-to-body score higher than which clever animal?

Their encephalization quotient is 5.26, which is why they can learn tricks and even recognise themselves in mirrors.

What are grown-up boy dolphins called?

Grown-up girl dolphins are called cows, and their babies are calves, just like cattle.

What did ancient Greek sailors believe when they saw dolphins swimming behind their ship?

In Greek myths dolphins were always helpers of people, and old coins show boys and gods riding on their backs.

Which country made the dolphin its national aquatic animal?

The country wanted to protect its rare Ganges river dolphin, and set up a special sanctuary for it on the river.

'Mereswine', an old English word for a dolphin, means what?

The usual name comes from ancient Greek instead, and travelled through Latin and Old French before reaching English.