The national animal of Tuvalu is the pantropical spotted dolphin. This species of dolphin is found throughout the world’s temperate and tropical oceans and is a common sight in the Pacific. They are among the most abundant dolphin species in the world and hold great symbolic significance to the people of Tuvalu.
Dolphins are naturally a common sight in this island nation in the Pacific ocean, and thus it is unsurprising that they should hold symbolic or spiritual significance to the native people.
This species of dolphin is one that has had a rocky history but today is stronger than ever.
Let’s find out more.
What is the national animal of Tuvalu?
The national animal of Tuvalu is the pantropical spotted dolphin.
This species of dolphin is one of the most abundant in the world and can be found throughout the oceans of the southern hemisphere.
They are a common sight from the island of Tuvalu and thus they have come to be of great symbolic significance to the people of the island.
They were first described as a distinct species by John Gray in 1846, and there are two recognized subspecies today.
They can vary a great deal in physical description across their enormous range—they can be found in the tropical and temperature oceans virtually across the whole world.
The coastal form is larger than the pelagic variety, as well as having more defined spots.
They are slender and streamlined, with a long, thin beak. Their falcate dorsal fin is the thinnest of all dolphins.
They are a highly active species and are known to make large, splashing leaps above the surface of the water.
They are known to swim with yellowfin tuna, which posed huge problems for the species in the past.
The yellowfin tuna is heavily fished by humans and in the past they were caught using the seine fishing method.
This means casting a wide net into the water which catches everything that swims into it, which caused many dolphins to become tangled and die.
During the 1980s, though, this method was largely abandoned, and the species bounced back spectacularly.
They do not, though, feed on the yellowfin tuna.
They are around 2.5 metres long in adulthood and weigh anywhere from 110 to 140 kilos.
They reach sexual maturity at around 10 years old for females and around 12 years for males, and live to be around 40 years old—remarkably long lived for a wild species.
Why is the pantropical spotted dolphin the national animal of Tuvalu?
The pantropical spotted dolphin is the national animal of Tuvalu for a variety of reasons.
On the one hand, they hold great symbolic significance for a number of reasons.
They are seen as symbols of freedom, grace, and unity—they have free range of the world’s oceans, more or less, and are often found living in large social groups with complex relationships and hierarchies.
All of these things have made them very important to the people of Tuvalu which see these aspects of the dolphin as a reflection of the values to the people.
On the other hand, though, they are seen more literally as embodiments of Tuvaluan beauty.
The tropical island nation is a paradise by many standards, and its clear blue waters reflect this.
The dolphins, one of the most important species living in these waters, are the greatest representations of the beauty of the island nation, then, and so on a more physical level they are seen as the spirits of the ocean and thus of the island.
Though they are now abundant, their national animal status also serves as a reminder of the great damage humanity did to their populations in the past.
Where are pantropical spotted dolphins found?
Pantropical dolphins are found over most of the world’s temperate and tropical oceans, as mentioned.
They are distributed widely in tropical and marine waters and are one of the most common species of dolphin in the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
It’s estimated that there are around three million total individuals in the world. Around two million of these are found in the eastern Pacific ocean.
This makes them the most abundant ocean cetacean in the world after the bottlenose dolphin.
The highest population densities can be found in the shallow, warm waters, and will also be found where there is a high temperature gradient.
What do pantropical spotted dolphins eat?
They dive into deeper waters at night in search of prey, and feed primarily on mesopelagic cephalopods and fish.
Dolphins typically need to work together in large groups to make feeding from large shoals of fish in the open ocean possible.
They can nimbly direct and divert the fish to one another as these shoals can be very hard to catch without teamwork for a species of the size of a dolphin.
They also eat things like squid, though the vast majority of their diet is fish—of course, it can also vary a great deal between disparate populations.
These dolphins, then, are of incalculable symbolic significance to the people of Tuvalu.
At the same time, though, consideration of their place in the ecosystem has also been a more literal consideration for the people of the island.
Thus, both of these things go together to make the dolphin the national animal, representing as it does many important national values of the island as well as embodying its physical beauty.