20 Facts About Dolphins That Will Make You Love Them Even More

Everyone loves dolphins. They’re finned, they’re fun, and they’re particularly friendly to humans. Sure, you know dolphins are enchanting, but these sea creatures are a whole lot more than meets the bottlenose. From listening with their mouths to remembering names for decades, these 20 jaw-dropping facts prove dolphins are the coolest creatures in the ocean—and maybe even on the entire planet!

1 A dolphin’s skin regenerates every two hours.

Scientists have found that dolphins have a “highly developed spoken language” much like that of humans, making a combination of pulses, clicks, and whistles that allow them to communicate. One 2016 study, published in Physics and Mathematics, describes how the language “exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language, [which] indicates a high level of intelligence and consciousness in dolphins… [T]heir language can be ostensibly considered a highly developed spoken language.”

3 Dolphins have the longest memories of any animal.

Usually, when an animal looks into the mirror they either ignore what they see, or think the reflection is another animal and act aggressively. Not so with dolphins—who can recognize that it is not another animal looking at them, but rather their own reflection. For a definitive 2001 study at the New York Aquarium, researchers installed mirrors in the tank of a pair of bottlenose dolphins, marking each dolphin with temporary ink—which the dolphin then stared at in the mirror. “Our findings show that self-recognition may be based on a different neurological substrate in dolphins,” the researchers concluded.

5 Dolphins listen with their jawbones.

Humans are unconscious breathers. We breathe in and out without realizing it, whether we’re asleep or awake or just totally unaware. Dolphins, however, have to make an active decision about each and every breath. As Bruce Hecker, director of husbandry at the South Carolina Aquarium, told Scientific American, a dolphin must be fully aware that their blowhole is at the surface, and then deliberately make the choice to inhale.

7 And they can inhale eight gallons of air in a single second.

While humans’ eyes move in the same direction, coordinating with each other, dolphins have much more leeway—with each eye located laterally on the sides of their heads and operating independently from one another. This means that they can get a far more expansive view of what’s happening around and even behind them as they swim through predator-filled water. But that’s not all…

9 They literally sleep with one eye open.