This fifth post in the Ask Chloe series tackles one important question from Cosmo! What do dolphins eat?
Cosmo (7yrs old from Illinois): Do dolphins eat sea turtles?
Dolphins do not eat turtles! Dolphins do eat other animals, such as fish, squid, shrimps, jellyfish, and octopi. The kinds of fish dolphins eat include mackerel, cod, and herring. Dolphins also get water through the food they eat, so they don’t need to drink water. Different species of dolphins eat different kinds of fish, and they can be very picky about what they eat. The spotted dolphins that Dolphin Dance Project has gotten to know eat mostly small squid and flying fish at night, and snack on razor fish and other similar fish in the sand during the day. Spinner dolphins in Hawaii have been found to eat fish, squid and shrimp. The squid and shrimp that the spinners eat come from deep water and migrate closer to the surface of the water at night when spinners hunt. A. trigonura is one species of squid the spinners eat, which migrates from a depth of 1640ft to 330ft at night. But no dolphin species eats sea turtles!
This photo was taken by my friend Orvil Clark, who you can find on Instagram under @ogc77.
The banner photo of a dolphin and sea turtle playing together was taken by dolphin dancer Kathleen Fisher.
