What do Common Dolphins Look Like?
The short-beaked common dolphin and long-beaked common dolphin differ in size and appearance from another. Short-beaked common dolphins are smaller than their long-beaked compadres, measuring in at six feet long and weighing close to 170 pounds with the males being a wee bit larger than their female counterparts.
This is relatively small when compared to the long-beaked common dolphin who reach lengths of 6 to 8.5 feet long and can mark the scale at 160 to 500 pounds, depending on gender. Short-beaked common dolphins also sport-up a mouth full of 40 to 57 pairs of small sharp teeth in each yapper, whereas the long-beaked common dolphins show off a grill full of 47 to 58 pearly whites.
Although a bit different when it comes to jean size and the amount of time it takes them to floss each night, these two species of dolphins are somewhat similar in certain areas of appearance. Both species of common dolphins have a rounded forehead, often referred to as a “melon”, with a fairly long beaklike rostrum. Their bodies are smooth and sleek, glammed up with a tall, triangular dorsal fin that rests atop their polished back.
Each species has a unique hourglass pattern of pigmentation that stretches across their body. Both can resemble your favorite superhero with a dark gray cape of coloration that runs along the back from the noggin to right below the dorsal fin, exemplifying a “V” shape on each side of its body, thus giving them that unique hourglass shape.
The short-beaked common dolphin wears a tan-like yellow shade of color behind its head on both its right and left side, with a light grey area on both sides below the yellow coloring. For an extra added dose of pizazz, a dark narrow stripe runs from the lower jaw to the flipper, meeting up with their dark colored rostrum. This style of dolphin attire is similar to the long-beaked common dolphin, but the dark colored cape that covers their backside includes the eye area of the long-beaked, whereas it does not for a short-beaked common dolphin.
Like most things, age brings out the glamor, which may be the reason as to why the adults have more prominent coloring whereas the youngsters have a more indistinct, often pale getup.