Dolphin Species: Long beaked Common Dolphin
Delphinus delphis

Appearance
This species of dolphin was only given its latin name 'delphinus capensis' in 1994, when the short beaked dolphins were split up from them. The long beaked common dolphin has less contrast between the dark, white and yellow parts of its body.

Differences include a slightly longer body, males 2m - 2.6m, females 1.9m - 2.3m and at birth 70cm+. They are also thinner to, with a less rounded head. Also, they have a thicker, dark line between the beak and the flipper. The most obvious difference is that of the beak size. They mainly live in coastal regions, and eat small fish and cephalopods.

The Common Dolphin (Delphinus delphis) is the name given to two, or occasionally one species of dolphin, depending on the taxonomical authority. Modern cetologists usually recognise two species - the Short-beaked Common Dolphin which retains the latin name Delpinus delphis and the Long-beaked Common Dolphin - D. capensis. Despite its name the Common Dolphin is not the dolphin of popular imagination - that distinction belongs to the Bottlenose Dolphin, largely due to the television series Flipper.

Differentiating species
Prior to the mid-1990s much of the literature lumped the entire Delpinus genus into a single species, the Common Dolphin. However these widely distributed dolphins exhibit a wide variety of size, shape and colour. Indeed over the past few decades over 20 distinct species in the genus have been proposed. Scientists in California in the 1960s concluded that there were two species - the long-beaked and short-beaked. This analysis was essentially confirmed by a more in-depth genetic study in the 1990s. This study also suggested that a third species (D. tropicalis, common name usually Arabian Common Dolphin), characterized by an extremely long and thin beak and found in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, might be distinguished from the long-beaked species. The current standard taxonomic works recognise this as just a regional variety.

Distribution
The Common Dolphin is widely distributed in temperate, sub-tropical and tropical waters throughout the world in a band roughly spanning 40 degrees south to 50 degrees north. The variation in make-up described above from one population to the next suggested little interaction between distinct groups The species typically prefer enclose bodies of water such as the Red and Mediterranean Seas. Deep off-shore waters and to a lesser extent over continental shelves are preferred to shallow waters. Some populations may be present all year round, others appear to move in a migratory pattern. Preferred surface water temperature is 10-28 degrees centrigrade. The total population is unknown but numbers in the hundreds of thousands.

Behavior
Common Dolphins travel in groups of around 10-50 in number and frequently gather into schools numbering 100 to 2000 individuals. These schools are generally very active - groups often surface, jump and splash together. Typical behaviour includes breaching, tail-slapping, chin-slapping and porpoising.

Common Dolphins have been seen to mix with other cetaceans such as other dolphins in the Yellowfish Tuna grounds of the eastern Pacific and also schools of Pilot Whales. An intriguing theory suggests that dolphins 'bow-riding' on very large whales was the origin of bow-riding on boats.

The gestation period is about eleven months and the calving period is between one and three years. Sexual maturation occurs at five years and longevity is twenty to twenty-five years. These figures are subject to large variation across different populations.

Conservation
Common Dolphins face a mixture of threats due to human influence. Populations have been hunted off the coast of Peru for use as food and shark bait. In most other areas the Dolphins have not been hunted directly. Several thousand individuals have been caught in industrial trawler nets throughout their range. Common Dolphins were abudant in the western Mediterranean Sea until the 1960s but occurences there have tailed off rapidly there. The reasons are not well understood but are believed to be due to extensive human activity in the area.

References
"Marine Mammals of the World. Systematics and Distribution", by Dale W. Rice (1998). Published by the Society of Marine Mammalogy as Special Publication No. 4
National Audobon Society Guide to Marine Mammals of the World ISBN 0375411410
Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals ISBN 0125513402
Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises, Mark Carwardine, ISBN 0751327816