Information gathering 1

Maybe I’ll go to the library later, could be a fun trip. But for now I’ll browse the web a bit instead.

Here is a mini essay I compiled from stuff found on the web.

Dolphins – by Ola Persson

The origin of the name dolphin comes from ancient Greek, and looks like this: δελφίς
It means “with a womb”. Fish don’t have wombs because their not mammals. There is a lot of different dolphin species, about 40 or so. Some dolphin species recently became extinct like the Yangtze River dolphin that probably died out in 2006. A lot of other river dolphin species face an uncertain future. So if you don’t want the species to be more 30ish donate some money for dolphin research. Maybe at http://www.wwf.org/

The dolphin I think about when I think about dolphins is usually the common bottlenose dolphin. Also the common bottlenose dolphin seams to be the one commonly held in aquatic zoo parks. This is the dolphin species I’m aiming to become.

Some more facts then, dolphins are considered smart, even though people you consider dumb are probably smarter then dolphins. They have great hearing, far superior to humans but probably hear trough the jaw somehow. They have echolocation capabilities but no smell. Instead of smell they probably taste the water. Be sure to write all this down, you never know when stuff like this comes in handy…

Dolphins are a pretty new thing species wise; they evolved about 50 million years ago. They actually used to be land living animals and returned to the sea to fill the niche of big surface dwelling predators that had been empty since the dinosaurs disappeared. Japanese researchers found a Bottlenose dolphin in 2006 with the remains of back legs, and it caused quite a stir in the creation/evolution debate. I’m not taking sides in that debate but I didn’t find so much information about how god created dolphins on the web so this essay will mostly be on the evolutionary side.

Anyhow I will create my dolphin as a polystyrene sculpture and then create a mold and cast it in some sort of rubber. If someone thinks of a better solution I’m up for a debate.