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Bottlenose dolphins live in groups called pods that typically number about 15 dolphins, but group size varies from solitary bottlenose dolphins up to groups of over 100 or even occasionally over 1000 animals. Their diet consists mainly of forage fish. Dolphin groups often work as a team to harvest schools of fish, but they also hunt individually. Dolphins search for prey primarily using echolocation, which is similar to sonar. They emit clicking sounds and listen for the return echo to determine the location and shape of nearby items, including potential prey. Bottlenose dolphins also use sound for communication. Sounds used for communication include squeaks and whistles emitted from the blowhole and sounds emitted through body language, such as leaping from the water and slapping their tails on the water.
There have been numerous investigations of bottlenose dolphin intelligence. Such testing has included tests of mimicry, use of artificial language, object categorization and self-recognition. This intelligence has driven considerable interaction with humans. Bottlenose dolphins are popular from aquarium shows and television programs such as Flipper. They have also been trained by militaries for tasks such as locating sea mines or detecting and marking enemy divers. In some areas they cooperate with local fishermen by driving fish towards the fishermen and eating the fish that escape the fishermen's nets. Some encounters with humans are harmful to the dolphins people hunt bottlenose dolphins for food, and dolphins are killed inadvertently as a bycatch of tuna fishing.
Scientists have long been aware that Tursiops might consist of more than one species. The advent of molecular genetics has allowed much greater insight into this previously intractable problem. The consensus amongst scientists is that there are two species[1]
