Moreover, it is also, 9 times out of 10, a bottlenose dolphin that comes playing with fishermen or swimmers. They are sometimes called "ambassadors dolphins", but scientists prefer the term of "solitary dolphin" as it is actually an animal living alone unlike its very social fellows that we meet in groups of a few tens of individuals. Bottlenose dolphins are common in the Strait of Gibraltar and are often associated with long finned pilot whales.

Bottlenose dolphins, or tursiops, are still among the most cosmopolitan cetaceans, they avoid only the very high latitudes of all the oceans. As far as their feeding habit is concerned, they are very opportunistic as they consume fish, cephalopods (squids and cuttle-fishes) or crustaceans (shrimps, …). We have even observed some of them "playing" with porpoises and, in the excitation, ended up eating them.

Photo Renaud de Stephanis

Bottlenose dolphins are characterised by a short and stubby beak, a grey pigmentation on the body and lighter on the belly.

Photo Renaud de Stephanis

Often demonstrative, they play in the wake of cargo's bows that travel through the Strait of Gibraltar.

Did you know?
It is not unusual to see bottlenose dolphins associated with other delphinidae species; the groups spend a few hours together before they go back their own way. Some of them probably continued their encounter, judging from the discovery of tursiops-Risso's dolphin or even tursiops-pilot whales hybrids: the result was rather curious! Other cases of hybrids are reported with cetaceans, between different species of balaenopteridae or between small dolphins species. Like all the hybrids, they are sterile.

Because they often live near the coasts, we can easily observe the tursiops. Each study puts forward new behaviours or different hunting strategies according to the circumstances. Some of them even learned how to use human fishing nets: on Mauritanian or Brazilian coasts, they push shoals of mullets to the beach where fishermen are waiting for them with nets. The fishes, blocked between the dolphins and men, are then easier to capture. Banquet guaranteed for bottlenose dolphins and good catch for fishermen!