Research on dolphin intelligence, for instance, has been done predominantly with bottlenose dolphins in captivity. Others, like the rough-toothed dolphins that stranded in Florida and are featured in our film, are less understood. Some dolphins live in deep water, and are more likely to travel in large communities numbering in the hundreds or even thousands. Others live nearer to shore, traveling in bands of maybe dozens or hundreds. Generally, we know more about dolphins that live out their lives nearer our coastlines, than those that roam the wide ocean, far from our view.
All dolphins belong to the scientific order cetacea, which comprises both whales and dolphins.
Dolphins are further subdivided into various families, the largest of which is called Delphinidae. Porpoises and river dolphins belong to different families. Scientists tell us that the ancestors of dolphins, whales and porpoises were land mammals called ungulates, or hoofed animals. Fifty million years or so ago these animals adapted to the rising ocean, eventually becoming mammals of the sea. The first recorded encounters between people and Atlantic spotted dolphins along the Little Bahamas Bank was in the late 1960's when divers were salvaging the wreck of a Spanish galleon.