Facts That Will Change The Way You See Dolphins

 Everyone loves dolphins. They’re intelligent, inquisitive, playful creatures who have captivated people since the dawn of time. 

 But dolphins didn’t get to be everyone’s favorite aquatic mammal just by lounging around all day. Having to adapt to life in the harsh ocean environment requires some serious skills. As a result dolphins, have developed some incredible abilities that continue to amaze researchers.

• Sleeplessness

 Everything needs sleep. The human world record holder, Randy Gardner, stayed awake for 11 days straight. By the fourth day, he was hallucinating. Not sleeping will eventually kill you and every other mortal creature with higher brain functions—except dolphins, which have apparently found a way around sleep. Baby dolphins actually forgot to sleep for the first month of life—and so, therefore, do their parents.

 The trick is that these amazing sea critters can shut half of their brain off at a time. Scientists tested dolphin reactions without rest for five days straight and their reaction time never slowed. Blood tests for signs of stress or sleep deprivation turned up negative. Dolphins may be able to do this indefinitely.

 Another study showed that dolphins can use their sonar for 15 days straight with almost perfect accuracy. It makes sense that dolphins evolved a way to keep an eye out for predators while they’re dozing in the open ocean. 


 But the truly fascinating part about all of this is that tests showed visual information was being passed from the snoozing side to the active side. Even though they shut down half of their noggin at a time, the other half can take over all the functions. It’s almost as if they have two brains.

• Alien-like ( Awesome )  respiration system!

It turns out that dolphins are pretty good swimmers. The bottlenose can hold its breath for 12 minutes and dive nearly 550 meters (1800 ft). Part of the reason dolphins can do this is because they’ve got incredible lungs. Though they aren’t much bigger than our own, they’re much more efficient.

With each breath, a dolphin exchanges 80 percent or more of its lung air. We puny humans can only get out about 17 percent. Their blood and muscles can store and transport more of that oxygen, too. This is because they have more red blood cells, which in turn have greater concentrations of hemoglobin than we do.