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Bottlenose dolphins squeak, squawk and use body language-leaping as high as 20 feet in the air, snapping their jaws, slapping their tails on the surface of the water, blowing bubbles and even butting heads. Each dolphin has a special whistle that it creates soon after it is born. This whistle is used for identification, just like a human's name. Dolphins also produce high frequency clicks, which act as a sonar system called echolocation (ek-oh-low-KAY-shun). When the clicking sounds hit an object in the water, like a fish or rock, they bounce off and come back to the dolphin as echoes. Echolocation tells the dolphins the shape, size, speed, distance, and location of the object.

Bottlenose dolphins have a sharp sense of hearing. Scientists believe that the sounds travel through the dolphin's lower jaw to its inner ear and then are transmitted to the brain for analysis.

Dolphins grow to be anywhere from 6 to 12 feet long. They shed their outermost layer of skin every two hours.

Very social and playful mammals, bottlenose dolphins form friendships that last decades hunting, mating and protecting each other. They like to surf in the waves and wakes of boats and swim through self-made bubble rings. They can swim up to 22 miles an hour.

These sea mammals feed on fish, squid, and shrimp. A group of dolphins will cooperate to make a mud ring to trap fish. Then, some of the dolphins in the group will wait outside the ring for the fish that try to escape, gulping them up as a snack.

Bottlenose dolphins are found in warm water all over the world. They live both in shallow water close to shore and far out in deep dark water. Dolphins face a lot of problems with getting trapped in the garbage humans leave on the beach.

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Thought to be some of the smartest animals on Earth, bottlenose dolphins send messages to one another in many different ways. They squeak, squawk and use body language-leaping as high as 20 feet in the air, snapping their jaws, slapping their tails on the surface of the water, blowing bubbles and even butting heads.

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How smart are dolphins?

You can't give a dolphin a pencil and ask her to do an IQ test.

Scientists think that dolphins may be smart because of their , their social nature and the way they behave. Quite how smart is difficult to say, and what dolphins may think of as smart might be quite different to what humans think of as intelligence.

Here is just some indicators of dolphin intelligence:

The Mirror Test: Dolphins seem to have a sense of self-awareness that most other animals do not, for example using the mirror test.

In Hunting: Dolphins think up new techniques for , including creating mud rings, acqua-planing, and even cooperating with humans. These innovative techniques suggest that dolphins may think creatively about how to solve problems in a manner similar to humans.

What's on your Mind? Some studies have tested whether dolphins can understand the intention of other minds. In other words, can the figure out what another dolphin or human wants from gestures or other indicators?

Humans understand gestures like pointing because when we see someone pointing, we look where they are pointing to in order to figure out what they mean. If dolphins can do so, they can recognise other minds, and that may be an indicator of higher intelligence.

Scientist Lou Hereman taught dolphins Ake and Phoenix gestures as a sort of basic language. Most o fthe time the trainers would use the gestures, but sometimes the trainers would simply point at an object instead and then use the command 'fetch'.

Ake and Phoenix did well when the trainer was pointing, even when the object was further away or if there were other objects nearby. This skill is all the more striking because unlike humans, dolphins don't have arms and aren't used to pointing gestures in the same way.

In another experiment dolphins were able to demonstrate that they understood when the trainer simply looked at an object for them to fetch; a sort of 'gaze' pointing.

The Lost Toolkit: Scientist Rachel Smolker of the Monkey Mia Project in Australia tells of how she lost a tool kit from a boat in a storm. About a week later a dolphin called Holly found the toolkit and dragged back to Rachel, who hadn't even thought about trying to find it again. This suggests that Holly put herself into the shoes of Rachel, to think what was important for the human.

Malia and Hou: Karen Pryor describes an intriguing episode at one of the shows of the Sea Life Park. Two dolphins called Malia and Hou, had different routines to perform in the show. Neither had been trained to perform the other's routine, though Mali could see Hou perform and the other way round.

One day, when Malia's gate was opened, the dolphin came out and did everything required; back jump, corkscrew and so on, but in the wrong sequence and in a very agitated way.

The second dolphin came out and performed the sequence though in a nervous and excitable way.

It was only afterward that Karen and the trainers realised that Malia had accidentally been put in Hou's enclosure, and Hou in Malia's. Yet each dolphin, realising what the other was supposed to do, improvised and did it anyway. Malia and Hou didn't just do what they'd been trained to do; they realised there was problem thought about how to solve it.

Dolphins needing help: Wild dolphins have been reported approaching divers for help, having apparently realised that that human had the skills they needed to solve their problem.

Are dolphins the smartest? But are dolphins the only non-humans that demonstrate this kind of intelligence? Not only great apes, but birds like crows and parrots are able to solve relatively complex problems (see the video).

Dolphins may not be the only smart animals we share the planet with.

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Dolphins look like big fishes, but they are actually mammals. They belong to a large group of animals called whales. Dolphins are closely related to porpoises. Because dolphins and porpoises look so much alike, people often confuse the two. However, dolphins are usually larger and have longer, beaklike snouts.

There are more than 35 species, or types, of dolphin. They are divided into two groups: true dolphins and river dolphins. True dolphins live throughout the world in either salt water or freshwater. The most widespread species are the common dolphin and the bottlenose dolphin. River dolphins live only in South America and Asia. They prefer freshwater.

Most dolphins are 7-10 feet (2-3 meters) long, but some species can reach a length of 13 feet (4 meters). Dolphins have smooth, rubbery skin. They are usually colored in some mixture of black, white, and gray. They have two flippers, or fins, on their sides, as well as a triangular fin on the back. A dolphin must come up to the water's surface to get air. It breathes through a single nostril, called a blowhole, on the top of its head.

Dolphins are known for being intelligent and playful. They live together in groups, called schools. They use sounds to communicate.

About 10 to 12 months after mating, a female dolphin gives birth to a single baby, or calf. The mother nudges the newborn calf up to the surface so that it can take its first breath. Some types of dolphin may live for 30 years.

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Dolphins look like big fishes, but they are actually mammals. They belong to a large group of animals called whales. Dolphins are closely related to porpoises. Because...