page_title: Common bottlenose dolphin
section_title: Intelligence
hierarchical_section_title: Common bottlenose dolphin / Description / Intelligence
caption_attribution_description: Tursiops truncatus (bottlenose dolphin) brain compared with brains of wild pig (Sus scrofa) and a plastic model of a human brain (Homo sapiens).
context_page_description: The common bottlenose dolphin or Atlantic bottlenose dolphin is the most well-known species of the family Delphinidae.
  Common bottlenose dolphins are the most familiar dolphins due to the wide exposure they receive in captivity in marine parks and dolphinaria, and in movies and television programs. The common bottlenose dolphin is the largest species of the beaked dolphins. They inhabit temperate and tropical oceans throughout the world, and are absent only from polar waters. Until recently, all bottlenose dolphins were considered as a single species, but now the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin and Burrunan dolphin have been split from the common bottlenose dolphin. While formerly known simply as the bottlenose dolphin, this term is now applied to the genus Tursiops as a whole. These dolphins inhabit warm and temperate seas worldwide. As considerable genetic variation has been described among members of this species, even between neighboring populations, many experts consider that additional species may be recognized.
context_section_description: The common bottlenose dolphin has a bigger brain than humans. Numerous investigations of bottlenose dolphin intelligence include tests of mimicry, use of artificial language, object categorization, and self-recognition. This intelligence has driven considerable interaction with humans. Common bottlenose dolphins are popular in aquarium shows and television programs such as Flipper. They have also been trained for military uses such as locating sea mines or detecting and marking enemy divers, as for example in the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program. In some areas, they cooperate with local fishermen by driving fish toward the fishermen and eating the fish that escape the fishermen's nets.
caption: The brain of common bottlenose dolphin (middle) that compared size to those of human (right) and wild boar (left)
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