Dolphins may be known as playful creatures but dolphins are also predators. Dolphin predators scour through the water in search of fish, crustaceans, and squid depending on which location that they call their habitat. Eating approximately 4% to 5% of their body weight in food per day, dolphin predators spend a lot of their time searching for food and then feeding on the food.
Dolphins are lucky because they have a large area of “home” in which to search for food. If the food sources become scarce, which they sometimes do after a few years of feeding, they will just migrate to a new location where they can find a more stable source of food. Dolphin predators can feed alone but most of the time the entire herd joins in on the food hunt.
When dolphins gather together in their herd they usually head off to find a large school of fish. Upon finding the fish they surround them using synchronous movements before they pounce and feed individually. There are times during the day that they also gather in smaller groups so that they can cover a much wider range of areas nearby to their home turf. During these hunts, dolphin predators often break from the group to search for food by themselves. When one dolphin locates the fish of choice, they move towards it calling out to the rest of the group that it is feeding time. The actual technique that the herd uses involves the dolphins swimming around and somewhat encircling a group of fish in a formation pattern that they use over and over again.
Now that we know that dolphins can be predators to gain food, it is also interesting to look at the other side of the feeding chain. Dolphins themselves can indeed become hunted. The most common threat to the dolphin is the tiger sharks, great white sharks and bull sharks for the most part. You may think that they would make a great treat for other animals with their high fat content and layers of meat. However, even with their valuable nutrition, most of the time dolphins can swim for months and years without ever being looked at as a food source themselves.
This is because dolphins are just more trouble then they are worth. Because they travel so much in pods they tend to protect the weaker members and attack when necessary. In fact, they have been known to kill sharks easily because the shark is usually a mammal that travels alone. Most predators of dolphins take one look and then swim the other way. Dolphins are pretty tough in nature but they have been known to be found in the bellies of killer whales that will eat almost anything that comes in their path.
These though are usually the calves that are caught from a killer shark rather than the adult dolphins. With their great eyesight, speed and general agility, most dolphins can swim at greater speeds than the whale which usually keeps them safe. For the most part dolphin predators are the hunters and not the ones being hunted.
