Speckle Count to Determine the Age Range of Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops sp.)
Because of their wide range of behaviors and social structure, as well as ecological and economic influence, dolphins are highly important to oceanographers and therefore have been thoroughly studied by humans. Currently, if researchers need to determine the age of a dolphin, they must extract a tooth and examine the calcium layers, which is similar to aging a tree by its rings. This process is invasive and time consuming, and is dangerous for both researchers and dolphins. An alternative method is using speckle count to determine an age range. Speckles are marks on a dolphin's body and dorsal fin that appear darker than the rest of the skin. This video will describe the process of figuring out whether or not there is a correlation between dolphin age and dolphin speckle number.
Show speech transcript
