Can dolphins have multiple births? What is the largest multiple birth on record?
The birthing process in whales and dolphins is called calving. Where we know about it, the number of calves born is almost always one. There are a few records of animals taken in whaling operations where there were two or more fetuses in the uterus. However, we don’t know if they would have survived to birth. For a long time we thought that manatees only gave birth to one calf at a time even though some old records had documented twin fetuses. However, years of study in Florida have shown that manatees do occasionally have twins and that they can survive. Most whale and dolphin births are not observed, so we really don’t know what happens. I suspect that twin births do occur, but only very rarely. Why do dolphins swim along fishing boats when the people are not fishing? Dolphins often ride the bow and stern wakes of all kinds of boats whether or not they are fishing. It is sort of like a free ride! Can you identify dolphins by their squeaks and whistles from their sonar? You can tell i
