A blunt-headed dolphin to 4 m (13 ft) with no beak whatsoever, a vertical crease splitting the front of the head, and a tall sickle fin. What identifies it at any distance is the color: the body is covered in a dense mesh of white scratches, and old animals are almost entirely white with a dark fin.
The scars are its record. Some come from the teeth of other Risso's - the species settles its social business by raking - and some from the hooks and beaks of the squid it eats. They never fade, so the animal accumulates them for life and the palest individual in a group is the oldest.
Squid is nearly the whole diet, and squid means depth and darkness: this is a night hunter that dives to several hundred meters, and its teeth have gone with the diet - only a few peg-like ones remain in the lower jaw, enough to grip something soft.
It is a deep-water animal that comes near shore only where the drop-off does, which in this sea means the offshore reefs and the steep coastal walls. Sightings are uncommon and usually brief.
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.
- blunt head with no beak at all and a vertical crease down the front of the melon
- body covered in white scratches, older animals almost white
- tall sickle-shaped dorsal fin, taller than a bottlenose's
- length up to 4 m
