Behaviour 



FLORIDA IS NOT ONLY a tourist's paradisc ; it has attractions for 

 naturalists and particularly those interested in marine biology as 

 well. The Marine Studios of Marineland, Florida, has the biggest 

 sea-water aquarium in the world, one of the few containing dolphins and 

 small whales. The aquarium has two tanks - a round one, 80 feet in 

 diameter and 1 3 feet deep, holding about 400,000 gallons of sea-water, 

 the other quadrangular, 100 feet x 100 feet x 20 feet deep. Visitors can 

 walk all around its edges, and can also go down into special passages along 

 the side of the tank to watch the animals through portholes. 



The tanks teem with sharks, rays and other fish, crabs, cuttlefish, turtles 

 and innumerable other creatures. Still, the Bottlenose Dolphins (or 

 Common Porpoises, as the Americans call them) have always been 

 the greatest attraction (Fig. 98). These animals are about ten feet long, 

 black on top and white underneath, and have snouts protruding from their 

 typically bulbous heads. They are quite common off the coast of Florida, 

 where they can be caught easily in nets, so that there is no difficulty in 

 keeping their numbers up - not that this presents a problem, in any case, 

 for they feel so much at home in Marineland that they breed there quite 

 happily. In addition to Bottlenose Dolphins, Marineland also has some 

 specimens of SteneUa plagiodon, a Spotted Dolphin, and an occasional Pilot 

 Whale. Pilot Whales, which are some twenty-two feet long, nearly black, 

 and with bulging, rounded, foreheads (Fig. 19) occasionally strand on the 

 Florida coast in schools of forty to fifty. While they normally perish fairly 

 quickly in the heat, the fortuitous presence of an expert may often save 

 their lives. We have seen earlier that dolphins can only be transported 

 alive if they are kept moist and cool, so that overheating and skin-blisters 

 which quickly lead to infections are avoided. By taking prompt action, 

 experts in 1948 managed to save a number of stranded Pilot Whales and 

 again in 1958 and then to take them to Marineland. Three of the four 

 animals captured in 1948 survived for only a few days, but the fourth, 



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