Fun ‘Did you know?’ facts about Ocean Animals — tap through 10 at a time!
A dolphin can recognise itself in a mirror.
That is a sign of self-awareness, which very few animals show. Some dolphins blow rings of bubbles to herd fish together before hunting, they often hunt as a team, and a newborn calf can swim almost straight away.
Dolphins need our help: plastic, fishing nets and noisy boats put them in danger.
Ocean pollution and a changing climate hurt them too. Looking after the sea means looking after the dolphins' home.
Dolphins come in more than 40 kinds, and some live over 50 years.
They live in the open ocean, along coasts and even in rivers — the bottlenose, the spinner and the Amazon river dolphin among them. Most live 30–40 years.
A dolphin only looks like it is smiling — its mouth is curved that way.
The curve never changes, even when it is resting or hunting. Its real dangers are big sharks and killer whales.
Dolphins lift a hurt friend up to the surface so it can breathe.
They guard each other from sharks, and there are records from around the world of dolphins guiding boats to shore and helping people in trouble at sea.
A dolphin mother carries her baby for about 12 months and stays beside it for years.
She feeds it milk and swims close by to keep it safe. Dolphins live in family groups called pods, which can hold a few dolphins or even hundreds.
Every dolphin has its own whistle, like a name — and can swim faster than 50 km/h.
Other dolphins call it by that whistle, and if one gets separated the pod calls out until it is found. Dolphins usually cruise at 10–20 km/h but can sprint past 50.
A dolphin is a mammal, not a fish — and one of the smartest animals on Earth.
It breathes air with lungs, is born live rather than hatched, drinks its mother's milk and has warm blood. Dolphins learn hundreds of signals, solve problems, copy people and even use simple tools.
A giant squid lives where sunlight never reaches.
Its eye is as big as a football, sperm whales dive more than 2 km down to hunt it, and its home is so dark and hard to reach that much about it is still a mystery.
A giant squid keeps most of its life a secret from scientists.
Nobody knows for sure how they breed, where most of them live, how far they travel each day, or how many there are in the world.
A giant squid lives only three to five years, and is shy rather than a monster.
It grows from a tiny baby to tens of metres in just a few years — one of the fastest growth rates of any animal. Old stories call it a sea monster, but it avoids people and there is no reliable record of one attacking anybody.
A giant squid eats fish, shrimp and crab — and was not photographed alive until 2004.
It also eats smaller squid and other deep-sea creatures. Japanese scientists took the first photo of a living giant squid in 2004, and the first video came only in 2012.
A giant squid's biggest enemy is the sperm whale.
Sperm whales dive deep to hunt them, and many carry round scars on their heads left by the squid's suckers.
A giant squid has eyes about as big as a football, and a beak strong enough to crack a crab.
Its eyes are around 25–27 cm across, which helps it catch the faintest light in the deep sea. In the middle of its arms is a hard beak like a parrot's, strong enough to break up fish and crabs.
A giant squid has blue blood and skin that can change colour in a flash.
Its blood carries copper instead of iron, which works well in cold deep water. Thousands of tiny colour cells in its skin let it turn dark or light very quickly.
A giant squid can be as long as a bus, with eight arms and two extra-long tentacles.
Females reach about 12–13 metres. It lives 300–1,000 metres down where the sea is dark, cold and crushing, and it uses its two long tentacles to grab food from far away.
Octopuses have short lives, caring mothers, and more than 300 different kinds.
Most octopuses live only one to three years. A mother guards her eggs for months without eating, and octopuses live in every ocean, from warm coral reefs to the cold, dark deep sea.
An octopus sprays a cloud of ink to escape — and can grow a new arm if it loses one.
The dark cloud hides it so a predator cannot see which way it went. And if an arm is lost, a tiny new one sprouts in its place and slowly grows back.
An octopus can change its colour, pattern and skin texture in seconds.
Camouflage helps it hide from enemies and sneak up on food. It is a real ocean ninja.
An octopus can unscrew a jar lid to reach its food.
Octopuses are among the cleverest animals in the ocean. They solve mazes, remember the way home, and recognise the people who look after them.
An octopus can squeeze through a hole no bigger than its beak.
With no bones in the way, it can slip through a jar opening, a bottle neck, or a pipe only a few centimetres wide.
An octopus has no bones — its only hard part is its beak.
The beak sits in the middle of its arms and is hard like a parrot's. An octopus uses it to break food into small pieces.
An octopus has blue blood because it uses copper instead of iron.
Our blood is red because it carries iron. An octopus uses copper, which turns its blood blue and works better in cold sea water.
An octopus's biggest heart almost stops when it swims.
Two of its three hearts pump blood to the gills and one pumps to the body. That body heart nearly stops while swimming, which is why octopuses would rather crawl.
An octopus has eight arms covered in suction cups.
Each arm has hundreds of little suckers. They help an octopus grip things — and even taste its food.
A starfish can grow a new arm if it loses one.
If a starfish loses an arm, it can slowly grow a brand new one to take its place.
The whale shark is the biggest fish in the sea.
It is about as long as a bus, but it is very gentle and eats mostly tiny sea creatures.
A jellyfish has no bones, no heart, and no brain.
It is mostly made of water and simply drifts along with the ocean currents.
Clownfish live safely among the waving arms of a sea anemone.
A special slimy coat keeps the clownfish from being stung, so the anemone becomes its cozy home.
A pufferfish can puff up like a balloon.
When it feels worried, it gulps water and blows up into a round, spiky ball.
A seahorse dad is the one who carries the babies.
The father seahorse keeps the eggs safe in a special pouch until the babies are ready to swim out.
The Greenland shark can live for hundreds of years.
Scientists think Greenland sharks can live around 400 years, making them the longest-living animals with a backbone.
The colossal squid has the biggest eyes of any animal.
Its eyes can be about 27 cm across — as big as a dinner plate — which help it see in the dark, deep parts of the ocean.
The blue whale is the biggest animal that has ever lived — bigger than any dinosaur.
A blue whale can grow to about 30 metres long and weigh as much as 30 elephants. Its heart is roughly the size of a small car, and a blue whale calf can gain around 90 kg a day just from its mother's milk.
Starfish don't have a brain.
A starfish has no brain and no blood. Instead it uses a simple network of nerves and moves seawater through its body to power hundreds of tiny tube feet. Many starfish can even regrow a lost arm.
A shrimp's heart is in its head.
A shrimp's heart sits just behind its head, in the front part of its body called the thorax — so it really does look like the heart is in the head. Many of its other organs are packed in there too.
Sea otters hold hands while they sleep so they don't float apart.
Sea otters rest floating on their backs, and holding paws — called 'rafting' — keeps the group together so no one drifts away on the current. They also wrap themselves in seaweed to stay anchored in one spot.
