Reading and vocabulary. Bottlenose Dolphin

Thought to be some of the smartest animals on Earth, bottlenose dolphins send messages to one another in many different ways.

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. 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.

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

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

Very social and playful mammals, bottlenose dolphins form             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       . They can swim up to 22 miles an       .

These sea mammals feed    [on, of] fish, squid, and shrimp. A group     [of, off] dolphins will cooperate     [for, to] make a mud ring to trap fish. Then, some of the dolphins    [on, 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, on] warm water all over the world. They live both    [on, in] shallow water close to shore and far out in deep dark water. Dolphins face a lot     [of, off] problems with getting trapped in the garbage humans leave    [to, on] the beach.