What do dolphins eat?
Dolphins are sea animals that humans often look up to because of their intelligence.
They have a range of habitats but they can be found in oceans all around the world.
This includes areas throughout the United States, the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, and off the coasts of Central America.
Dolphins are known for having relatively good eyesight out of the water.
However, while they are underwater, their eyesight is fairly poor.
What and How Dolphins Eat
Instead of using their vision to determine how to get food, dolphins use a sixth sense called echolocation.
This allows them to emit high-pitched sounds and perceive the echoes as they bounce back from objects in their environment.
Dolphins have a diet that consists of a variety of fish, squid, octopuses, and crustaceans.
They use their echolocation to find creatures in the water while they cruise at up to 30 miles per hour.
This is possible due to their ability to process information quickly and efficiently.
Enough so that they do not become tired after expending so much energy to catch their prey.
When dolphins hunt, they use a technique called herding.
They work together to trap the fish or other prey in a small area and prevent it from escaping.
Dolphins will also use this echolocation to determine when an object such as a school of fish is nearby by using it to navigate through the water and locate objects.
Dolphins are known for their playfulness while hunting because they like to jump out of the water, spin around, or slap their tails on the surface of the water.
Some scientists believe that dolphins do these activities because it helps them trap more prey in a smaller area when they swim through schools of fish.
Dolphins can be found as far as 150 miles from the coast but they tend to prefer shallower waters.
They usually swim within 30 feet of the shoreline or deeper depending on how old they are and what area of the ocean they live in.
The location where a dolphin’s food is located helps determine its habitat location.
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