Crack the Spine - Issue 173

unblinking, frozen, immersed in the facts I’d been reciting from the pages she’d already memorized, the facts she would always know better than any of us pathetic dry-landers.

In captivity, dolphins have lived as long as 40 years. In the wild, though, scientists believe they only live 25 to 30 years.

Some specific whistles, called signaling whistles, are used by dolphins to identify and call each other, and besides immediate family members, imitation of the signature whistle seems to occur only among befriended adult males.

A bottlenose’s skin feels like rubber due to an absence of any sweat glands and an unusually thick epidermis, ten to 20 times thicker than that of other terrestrial mammals. The skin will peel and flake off in order for new skin cells to replace the older ones. This is similar to how human skin cells are replaced.

The layer under the epidermis is where the nerves, connective tissues, and the blood vessels are found.

If a dolphin’s tooth gets knocked out, it’s never replaced.