What Do Dolphins Eat?

If you ask anyone what a dolphin eats, you’ll probably get the same answer: fish! After all, fish are abundant in all the different waters where dolphins live. However, dolphins are opportunistic carnivores, taking advantage of whatever prey is available. Fish may be their preferred food, but they’ll also consume crustaceans, squid, jellyfish, cephalopods, and other invertebrates. Read on to learn more about the different foods that dolphins eat.

Foods That Dolphins Eat

While bottlenose dolphins are most commonly thought of when people talk about dolphins, there are more than 40 dolphin species in the world. For most dolphins, the vast majority of their prey are fish. However, the diets of dolphins vary by habitat and species. Dolphins that live along coastlines have different diets from dolphins that live in the open ocean.

With habitat and species variations in mind, dolphins have a diet that may include the following:

• Fish, including hake, cod, mackerel, herring, mullet, and anchovies
• Eel
• Crab
• Clams
• Shrimp and prawns
• Squid
• Jellyfish
• Krill
• Octopus
• Mollusks
• Small rays and skates

Food Preferences Between Dolphin Species

Though fish is an obvious choice for the majority of dolphins, as noted above, the specific diet of each dolphin species varies slightly. Let’s take a look at a few dolphin species and the foods they prefer in their habitats.

Bottlenose Dolphins

Bottlenose dolphins mostly eat fish, but they will also eat cephalopods (squids and octopuses) and crustaceans (crabs and shrimp). A 2017 study of bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf of Cadiz found that their diet consisted primarily of fish — especially European conger and hake — with much smaller proportions of cephalopods and crustaceans.

Dusky Dolphins

Dusky dolphins, found in deep waters in the Southern Hemisphere, hunt for food both at the bottom and at the surface. In addition to fish, they also seek out shrimp, squid, and anchovies in the ocean waters they live in.

Risso’s Dolphins

Risso’s dolphins have a more specialized diet. Although they are found in coastal waters worldwide, they are known for primarily eating large, deep-sea squid. However, like most dolphins, they will eat what is available, including fish and small squid that live in shallow waters.

River Dolphins

River dolphins have access to food that dolphins in the ocean do not. The Indus River dolphin eats freshwater fish such as catfish and carp, as well as clams and shrimp. The Amazon River dolphin is known to eat over 40 types of fish, as well as shrimp, crabs, and small reptiles such as turtles and snakes.

Spinner Dolphins

Spinner dolphins prefer feeding at night in the warm waters of tropical and subtropical climates. They live in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, giving them plenty of variety to choose from. Small fish are a staple of their diet, but since they dive to depths of up to 1,000 feet, they also consume jellyfish, krill, shrimp, and squid.

How Dolphins Hunt for Prey

Most dolphins locate their food source with echolocation. The clicking noises they make bounce off their prey, allowing dolphins to determine their location. Then the dolphins chase and encircle the fish as a pod, simply opening their mouths to catch them. Dolphins’ teeth are not for chewing, but for holding prey. So, if the fish is too big to eat whole, they will sometimes break up the fish by slamming it on the water’s surface.

Baby dolphins primarily rely on their mothers for milk. However, as the baby grows, it will consume about 4% to 6% of its body weight in food per day, learning to capture prey with the help of its family. You will rarely see a baby dolphin hunting for food on its own, as dolphins generally hunt in packs.