Mammals · plate 25 of 60
Dolphin
Tursiops truncatus
Knows everyone's name. Including yours, you just can't pronounce it.
Only 2.0% of people are Dolphins. (estimated)
If you're a Dolphin
You are the social center of any room, curious about everything and quick to turn it into a game. Bottlenose dolphins each have a signature whistle that works like a name, hunt in teams and blow bubble rings for no obvious reason; you have the same brain and the same calendar. You sleep with one eye open and never miss anything.
A dolphin sleeps one half of its brain at a time, with the opposite eye open, so it can keep breathing and keep watch while half asleep.
The Dolphin as a spirit animal
Matching a Dolphin says you are the friend who makes the plan, invites the stragglers and then changes the plan halfway because something more interesting swam past. You are quick, playful and generous with attention. The flaw is that a mind this busy gets bored fast and sometimes plays rough; dolphins toss fish around for fun, and your friends have seen you do the equivalent at parties. You are never, ever dull.
Grounded in how the species actually lives; nothing borrowed from anyone's tradition. Why we put it that way.
How to get along with a Dolphin
Do
- Join the game; they bond by playing, not by talking about it.
- Give them a crowd to work and a problem to solve, ideally at once.
- Say things plainly; they read the room constantly and appreciate not having to.
Don't
- Don't try to keep them to one plan or one pool.
- Don't mistake the smile for consent; a dolphin's face is shaped that way whatever it is feeling.
When it goes wrong: A Dolphin under pressure gets louder, faster and pushier and recruits the whole pod; step out of the splash zone, name the problem directly and give them something to do with all that motion.
The Dolphin in a relationship
You flirt with everyone and mean it with a few. Bottlenose dolphins don't pair for life; their closest bonds are long friendships, and mothers raise calves with help from the rest of the pod. You love like that: loyal to the group, affectionate, physical and never far from a crowd.
Field notes
Every animal is placed on six personality traits derived from how the species lives. Your answers are placed on the same six, and the closest animal wins. How the scoring works
- Sociability
- 10
- Boldness
- 7
- Energy
- 9
- Curiosity
- 10
- Devotion
- 8
- Roaming
- 8
- Dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia carry marine sponges on their snouts to protect them while rooting in the seabed, a trick passed from mother to daughter.
- A bottlenose dolphin develops its own signature whistle in its first year and keeps it for life; others copy it to call that individual.
- Calves nurse for well over a year and stay with their mothers for several years, often with other females helping to mind them.
Dolphins in literature
- Arion's Dolphin — Histories, Herodotus (430 BCE)
- The Dolphin — The Adventures of Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi (1883)
- The Dolphin of Hippo — Natural History, Pliny the Elder (77)
Characters from public-domain works. Company, not a verdict.
Closest personalities
The animals whose profiles sit nearest to the Dolphin's. If you got Dolphin, one of these was probably your runner-up.
Other mammals
WolfRed FoxBrown BearPolar BearLionTigerLeopardCheetahElephantGiraffeHippopotamusGorillaOrangutanSlothKoalaKangarooPlatypusOtterBeaverBadgerRaccoonHedgehogBatCamelSperm Whale
Among the 60
Brehms Tierleben, Alfred Brehm (1890). Public domain, viacommons.wikimedia.org.All credits
