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namu-the-orca In reply to Adleisio [2015-11-04 15:18:37 +0000 UTC]

I know that Karatechick13 already said this but I too can assure you that this is a 100% T. aduncus To get this amount of spotting, or ever much more, is not at all unusual in aduncus and no hybridisation is needed for it. In fact off the east coast of Africa some older aduncus animals can get incredibly heavily spotted, nearly resembling a Bahamian Atlantic spotted dolphin! See for example scontent-ams3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/h…  scontent-ams3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/h… or scontent-ams3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/h… ; They differ however from Atlantic spotties in having no white spotting, and with the black spots (at least in Namibia) being restricted to the ventral areas, hardly ever protruding onto the flanks or back. 

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Adleisio In reply to namu-the-orca [2015-11-05 03:12:16 +0000 UTC]

Uh, interesting, never seen this before.

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karatechick13 In reply to Adleisio [2015-09-23 01:09:22 +0000 UTC]

This one was definitely a bottlenose; the ones in this area (T. aduncus) do sometimes gain speckling with age.

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Adleisio In reply to karatechick13 [2015-09-23 02:01:39 +0000 UTC]

Interesting, normally that is only seen in hybrids or ones that have hybrid lineage.

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karatechick13 In reply to Adleisio [2015-09-27 09:43:59 +0000 UTC]

I've seen it in a few of them here.

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Adleisio In reply to karatechick13 [2015-09-27 15:13:37 +0000 UTC]

Yeah, though I know Pantropical Spotted Dolphins have an overlap of range in the area where the image was taken. It is possible there have been some interbreeding in non-local areas, because it have happened several times in other areas.

other spotted/bottlnose hybrids in the Atlantic
There have also been Common/Striped hybrids found.

*shrugs* It is also possible it is just a random mutation.

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karatechick13 In reply to Adleisio [2015-09-29 06:38:37 +0000 UTC]

Yeah true, it's always a possibility. I know I've seen dolphins that I've suspected to be humpback dolphin (S. sahulensis)/ bottlenose (T. aduncus) hybrids in that area too. Just wish I could have gotten a genetic sample!!  

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Adleisio In reply to karatechick13 [2015-09-29 11:40:58 +0000 UTC]

Maybe one of these days someone will get one.

People have captured photos of what is to be believed a northern right whale Dolphin and Pacific white-sided hybrid. So hybridization in dolphins is not exactly super rare.

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karatechick13 In reply to Adleisio [2015-10-23 03:15:14 +0000 UTC]

Yeah definitely! It's not common, but definitely not unheard of. Also relating to the original matter of this colouration, I thought that you may find this interesting... The following link is a paper which talks about the speckling on T. aduncus. See page 1162 for a cool illustration. drive.google.com/file/d/0B682w…

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Adleisio In reply to karatechick13 [2015-10-23 03:17:07 +0000 UTC]

Hooray, research papers!

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