Dolphins and Porpoises

O

Orleander

OH JOY!!!!
Valued Senior Member
Can Porpoises mate with Dolphins? Could this be male dolphins killing porpoise rivals?

Mysterious Porpoise Deaths Blamed On Berserk Dolphins

MOSS LANDING, Calif. -- Marine biologists have figured out why a growing number of dead harbor porpoises have been found on California beaches in recent years: dolphin attacks.

Now they're trying to determine a reason for them.

Okeanis, a Moss Landing-based conservation group, shot video of bottlenose dolphins fatally attacking a porpoise. It helps explain why carcasses were found with internal bleeding, rake marks and broken bones.

"We saw severe beatings," said Okeanis Chief Scientist Daniela Maldini. "It was a mob of dolphins."

Dan Costa, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, said such an act of violence is not as unusual as it might seem in the wild.

"Everybody thinks flipper is this nice, mellow animal," Costa said. "In the wild, there's interactions that occur and not all of them are friendly."

Scientists say about 74 dead porpoises washed up last year in the state....
 
I would think that competition for resources would cause conflict like this before competition for mating.
 
They may, it's probably not unheard of. But dolphins are very social animals within members of their own species, so it's probably less common (and in this case, fights over a mate between two individuals would likely be more common).
 
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"One possible explanation for the violence, according to Maldini, could be pent up sexual angst on behalf of male dolphins.
...That's my favorite in terms of an explanation.."

Thats her favorite?? Shes insane.

Anyways back to the topic. One guy in the video compared dolphins/porpoise to dogs and cats. Bad analogy.

Better analogy Foxes and Coyotes. or Coyotes and Wolves.

Foxes and wolves will co-exist. Coyotes kill fox, wolves kill coyotes. It seems to me to be a food resource/territory competition.
 
Male dolphins fight each other all the time for females. But Yes I would think competition for resources makes better sense, but I'm not a marine biologist.
 
Porpoises are in the family Phocoenidae and dolphins are in the family Delphinidae. So they do not mate. period.

but, draqon is in the same family as ElectricFetus, so there is a potential there.
 
draqon said:
Porpoises are in the family Phocoenidae and dolphins are in the family Delphinidae. So they do not mate. period.

but, draqon is in the same family as ElectricFetus, so there is a potential there.
Click to expand...

Sorry to burst your bubble Draq, but you at least have to be in the same genus :D
 
Where are the biologists??? A little biology is in order here but I guess the Head Linguist is going to have to fill in because this is also about words and their meanings.

"Dolphin" and "porpoise" are not the names of individual species of mammals. There are about forty different species of dolphin and six different species of porpoise.

The distinction between the two is rather arbitrary. Dolphins and porpoises are all members of the suborder Odontoceti, "toothed whales." They are all cetaceans but this distinguishes them from the suborder Mysticeti, the baleen whales. All of these "whales" are members of the order Cetacea.

Baleen whales have bony ridges of baleen in their mouths that they use to filter krill (tiny shrimp) out of the water. Toothed whales have, well, teeth. They are all carnivores, eating only animal flesh, but while the toothed whales hunt and eat large sea creatures including fish, birds and mammals, the baleen whales just cruise along taking mouthfuls of water and swallowing the krill they trap.

There is a problem with the designation of the cetaceans as an order, because it was recently discovered that they are actually a suborder of the artiodactyls (cattle, antelopes, pigs, deer, sheep, giraffes, camels, etc.)--descendants of primitive hippopotamuses who swam all the way to the mouth of the river and just kept going. They lost their pelvis (except for a couple of tiny vestigial bones not connected to anything), their hind legs, their hooves, their vegetarian diet and their ability to survive out of the water.

The sperm whale has teeth and is, technically, a gigantic dolphin rather than a true whale. Anyone who's petted an orca or "killer whale" at Sea World knows that they are also just another species of dolphin.

Getting back on topic, there are quite a few families of cetaceans that are called "dolphins," but only one family is called "porpoises." The Ganges River dolphin (one of the few species of freshwater cetaceans) differs as much from the familiar bottlenose dolphin as either of them differs from the lovable harbor porpoise. So as I said, the distinction is rather arbitrary. Just call them all "toothed whales."

Most dolphins and porpoises are pack-social animals who go fishing in efficient groups or "pods." Like all pack-social mammals they are loyal to their pack-mates but can't be depended on to be charitable to an outsider, particularly if he's encroaching on their favorite fishing spot. If the outsider is a member of another species--who doesn't observe the same social rituals and doesn't "speak" the same whistling language--he might as well be a hunk of food. A pod of orcas in fact will often eat just about anything or anybody they can catch, including the babies of the huge baleen whales. (Although from everything I've read it is apparently true that orca attacks on humans are extremely rare.)

So that's why a dolphin, or a toothed whale of any species, might attack a porpoise, or a toothed whale of any other species. They don't consider each other equals, much less pals.

As for cross-breeding, the rules are the same as for all other animals and plants. The two species have to be members of the same genus. (This rule is challenged by the reassignments of species from DNA analysis, but it's close enough for us amateurs.) This is why you can hybridize an ass with a horse or a zebra, but not with a sheep or a llama. There are documented instances of hybrid dolphins being found, and they are hybrids of closely related species.

Dolphins and porpoises, by definition, belong not just to different genera but to different families. So they cannot interbreed.
 
Great post, Fraggle. But I wouldn't call the distinction between Common Bottlenose Dolphins and Harbor Porpoises arbitrary.
To say the distinction between them is arbitrary would be like saying that the distinction between White-handed Gibbons and Modern Humans is arbitrary :D


Toothed Whales - Suborder Odontoceti
...Superfamily Delphinoidea

......Porpoises - Family Phocoenidae
.........Genus Phocoena
............Harbor Porpoise - Phocoena phocoena

......Oceanic Dolphins - Family Delphinidae
.........Bottlenose dolphins - Genus Tursiops
............Common Bottlenose Dolphin - Tursiops truncatus



Arsiers, Monkeys and Apes - Suborder Haplorrhini
...Apes - Superfamily Hominoidea

......Gibbons - Family Hylobatidae
.........Genus Hylobates
............White-handed Gibbon - Hylobates lar

......Great Apes (including humans) - Family Hominidae
.........Genus Homo
............Modern Humans - Homo sapiens
 
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Fraggle Rocker said:
....As for cross-breeding, the rules are the same as for all other animals and plants. The two species have to be members of the same genus. (This rule is challenged by the reassignments of species from DNA analysis, but it's close enough for us amateurs.) This is why you can hybridize an ass with a horse or a zebra, but not with a sheep or a llama. There are documented instances of hybrid dolphins being found, and they are hybrids of closely related species.

Dolphins and porpoises, by definition, belong not just to different genera but to different families. So they cannot interbreed.
Click to expand...

Thanks Fraggle!
 
Enmos said:
Great post, Fraggle. But I wouldn't call the distinction between Common Bottlenose Dolphins and Harbor Porpoises arbitrary.
Click to expand...
The last chart I saw--wherever it was--said that there are something like five or six families of dolphins and one family of porpoises, and that the term "dolphin" can be used in some contexts to encompass all toothed whales except the sperm whale. If not downright arbitrary, certainly confusing!
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
The last chart I saw--wherever it was--said that there are something like five or six families of dolphins and one family of porpoises, and that the term "dolphin" can be used in some contexts to encompass all toothed whales except the sperm whale. If not downright arbitrary, certainly confusing!
Click to expand...

Ah, you were referring to the popular use of the name Dolphin then?
I agree that what you describe there is rather arbitrary.
The article referred to Common Bottlenose Dolphins though :)

Similarly (or actually this is more like the opposite), for instance, this may be considered confusing as well:
Beeches - Family Fagaceae
...Chestnuts - Genus Castanea
...Beeches - Genus Fagus
...Oaks - Genus Quercus

;)
 
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