This leaves a series of shallow cuts in the other dolphin’s skin. Raking happens when a dolphin scrapes its anterior (front) teeth against the body or face of another member of the pod. One of the tools dolphins use to establish their dominance is a behavior called ‘raking’. Each pod has a unique social hierarchy, starting with the lowest ranked (often the youngest) individuals, and moving up to the most dominant members of the group. Dolphins are social creatures, and live in pods of up to dozens of animals. Social Hierarchyĭolphins don’t just use their pearly whites to catch fish they also use them to establish dominance among other dolphins. Still other species of dolphin have even more specialized dentition for their unique diets–more on that later. While other species, like the orca whale, eat mostly large prey like seals, and have sharper teeth for tearing flesh. Some species, like the bottlenose dolphin, eat a general diet of fish, squid, and krill, and have very typical, conical, blunt teeth. But different species of dolphin may eat more of one than the other this is where differences in teeth appear. Diet and Teethĭolphins mostly eat fish, krill, plankton, and cephalopods ( squid). Depending on the species of dolphin, these teeth may be blunt or sharp–it all depends on what they like to eat. The dolphin’s sole tooth type is small (up to ½ inch in length) and conical. In comparison humans have four distinct types of tooth–incisors, canines, premolars, and molars. It may be large, but even the orca (also called killer whale) shares the same dentition as the much smaller bottlenose dolphin.Īlmost all dolphin species are homodonts, meaning they only have one type of tooth. The largest member of the dolphin family is the orca whale (Orcinus orca). They share this characteristic with other cetaceans like sperm whales, beaked whales, and porpoises. What Type of Teeth Do Dolphins Have? Dolphins have up to 265 teethĭolphins are odontocetes, meaning toothed cetacean.
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