---
title: Pantropical Spotted Dolphin (Stenella attenuata)
scientific_name: Stenella attenuata
common_name: Pantropical Spotted Dolphin
taxon: Dolphins
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-02T09:24:07.640Z
updated: 2026-08-14T11:57:50.836Z
tags: Pantropical Spotted Dolphin, Stenella attenuata, Dolphins, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/mammals/dolphins/pantropical-spotted-dolphin
---

# Pantropical Spotted Dolphin (*Stenella attenuata*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Dolphins (*Delphinidae*)
- **Size:** up to 2.6 m
- **Weight:** 110 - 140 Kg
- **Depth:** 0-300 m
- **Max age:** 40 yrs
- **Diet:** Piscivore
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Open water off the reef, sometimes over deep drop-offs
- **Reproduction:** Live-bearer, Gonochoric
- **CITES:** Appendix II
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- dark cape over a pale belly, the whole body flecked with pale spots in adults
- long slender beak with a white tip, like a dipped brush
- calves have no spots at all and look like a different species
- length up to 2.6 m

A slender fast dolphin to 2.6 m (8.5 ft), dark-caped over a pale belly, with a long beak tipped in white as if dipped in paint. Adults are covered in pale flecks; that is what the name records, and it is also a clock.

Calves are born plain. Spots appear on the belly first, then spread over the back and multiply with age, so an animal's approximate age can be read off its skin at a glance and an unspotted animal in a group is a juvenile rather than another species. Old adults can be so heavily spotted that the pattern merges into a general paleness.

They are among the faster small cetaceans and among the more enthusiastic bow-riders, arriving from nowhere at a moving boat, staying for a few minutes and peeling away. Feeding is on small fish and squid, largely at night and in the upper few hundred meters.

This is also the species that changed the tuna industry. Yellowfin tuna swim beneath spotted dolphin schools in the eastern Pacific, and fishermen who set nets around the dolphins to catch the tuna killed millions of them before observer programs and dolphin-safe rules came in. The animals here belong to different populations and were never part of that fishery, but the species carries the history.

**We do not support keeping dolphins in captivity.** These are animals that travel tens of kilometers a day, hunt in coordinated groups, hold societies with their own dialects, and stay with their families for life. A show pool reproduces none of it, and the noise, the chlorine and the boredom are not details - they are what kills them early. Many of the animals performing today were taken from the sea, and the drive hunts that supply them continue because the tickets sell. So do not buy one. No dolphinarium, swim-with-dolphins program or hotel show survives without paying visitors, and every one of them ends the day people stop coming.

## Also known as

- **English:** Cape dolphin, Graffman's dolphin, kiko (in Hawaii)
- **Hebrew:** סטנלה ברודה *
- **French:** dauphin tacheté pantropical, Dauphin bridé
- **Italian:** stenella maculata pantropicale
- **German:** Schlankdelfin, Schlankdelphin, schlanker Delphin
- **Spanish:** bufeo manchado, delfin de antifaz, delfín manchado pantropical
- **Greek:** Παντροπικό διάστικτο δελφίνι
- **Turkish:** pantropik benekli yunusu
- **Portuguese:** golfinho pintado dos tropicos, golfinho pintado pantropical
- **Dutch:** Slanke dolfijn
- **Polish:** stenella wysmukła
- **Japanese:** arari iruka, マダライルカ
- **Ukrainian:** Дельфін Атенуата, Продельфін атенуата
- **Russian:** pyatnistyi delfin
- **AF:** gevlekte dolfyn
- **KO:** jeombagi-dolgorae
- **LT:** dėmėtasis prodelfinas
- **MLG:** lambondriaka pentimpetina
- **SL:** vitki progasti delfin
- **TH:** plaloma lai chut

## Scientific synonyms

- *Clymene punctata* Gray, 1866
- *Clymenia (Steno) attenuatus* Flower, 1870
- *Clymenia attenuatus* Flower, 1882
- *Clymenia capensis* Flower, 1884
- *Delphinus albirostratus* Peale, 1848
- *Delphinus brevimanus* Wagner, 1846
- *Delphinus malayanus* Schlegel, 1841
- *Delphinus microbrachium* Gray, 1850
- *Delphinus pseudodelphis* Wiegmann in Wagner, 1840
- *Delphinus punctatus* Gray, 1866
- *Delphinus velox* G. Cuvier, 1829
- *Lagenorhynchus albirostratus* Peale, 1848
- *Lagenorhynchus coeruleoalbus* Cassin, 1858
- *Prodelphinus alope* Lutken, 1889
- *Prodelphinus attenuatus* Flower, 1885
- *Prodelphinus brevimanus* H. Gervais in Van Beneden & Gervais, 1880
- *Prodelphinus capensis* Trouessart, 1898
- *Prodelphinus graffmani* Lonnberg, 1934
- *Stenella graffmani* Kellogg, 1940
- *Stenella pseudodelphis* Oliver, 1922
- *Steno attenuatus* Gray, 1846
- *Steno brevimanus* Gray, 1866
- *Steno capensis* Gray, 1865
- *Steno consimilis* Malm, 1871

## Range

Comoros, Federal Republic of Somalia, Gulf of Mexico, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mediterranean Sea, Mozambique, New Zealand, North Atlantic Ocean, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles, Tanzania, Western Indian Ocean

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/mammals/dolphins/pantropical-spotted-dolphin)*
*Updated: August 14, 2026*